Zombies were America's cultural obsession circa 2012 or so. Something to do with a gritty response to sparkling vampires and the fact they're a remorseless kill. People are not the enemy, it's the plague and the people you kill are already dead and stripped of their soul. I've been clamoring that there's nothing left to say about zombies for some time now and apparently I was wrong. First time director Henry Hobson movie Maggie, starring none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, is a zombie movie like you've never seen before. Because it's not really about zombies.
There's a lot about Maggie you've already seen in other zombie movies. There is a mysterious outbreak transforming people into soulless, rotting cannibals, society is collapsing and everyone is left to fend off for themselves. The universe of Maggie is not as hopeless as The Walking Dead's. There are still institutions, police and hospitals trying to control the plague, but it doesn't matter to Wade Vogel (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a Kansas-based farmer, after his daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) gets bit and undergoes slow and painful transformation. He will have to protect her against a world that has already condemned her to a lonely and violent death.
Maggie is not really a horror movie. Of course, it has zombies in it and moments of teeth-gnashing body horror, but if you're hoping for gut-churning scares and mass killings of undead people, Maggie will be a profoundly unsatisfying experience for you. It's more of a Southern Gothic experience than horror. It's one of the rare contemporary movies about a father's love for his daughter that doesn't involve a form of abuse. Maggie is about Marguerite Vogel slowly dying and his father Wade's efforts to make her last days as comfortable as possible. If you're not into psychological drama with a Southern Gothic taste, Maggie might not be the movie for you.
Great scene, maybe not as spectacular as you would've wished.
So, what the fuck is Arnold Schwarzenegger doing in that movie if he doesn't spend 90 minutes slaughtering undead and evil government people who want to break his family apart? He's actually a great cast. Director Henry Hobson thought outside the box on this one and it resulted in perhaps the best dramatic performance in Schwarzenegger's career. Don't get me wrong, Arnie's a rather limited dramatic actor, but he doesn't get to talk much in Maggie and his physical presence is what gets the job done. He only has to stand around in tattered work clothes and look at his daughter in silence to be heartbreaking. Often I was not seeing Arnie in Wade Vogel, but a well-meaning father trying his best not to give up on the broken pieces of his family.
I'm pretty sure some fuckhead is going to claim Maggie is an allegory of the traditional American family being broken apart by some foreign threat. This is the political climate we're living it and the movie lends itself to this interpretation if it's what you're looking for. I thought it was a beautiful movie about fatherhood and that the "foreign threat" in question could've been any infectious disease and the film would've worked anyway. Maggie discusses the role of men without actually antagonizing or patronizing women, which is kind of an exploit in itself. More important, Maggie is not a conventional zombie movie. It's a powerful, gut-wrenching Southern Gothic drama that transcends its horror setting.