Maggie (2015) Starring: Abigail Breslin, Arnold SchwarzeneggerWritten By: John Scott 3Directed By: Henry HobsonRelease Date: May 8, 2015Rating: B
Summary: When a man's daughter is bitten by a zombie, he must decide what he has to do as she gets closer and closer into fully turning.
My Thoughts:
Maggie does something that you don't see often in your typical zombie movie and that's what makes it so special. What it lacks in blood, guts and gore, it makes up with it's heart. However, this film is not about survival, neither is it about finding out exactly how the outbreak happened. Maggie is about the bond between a father and daughter and what lengths we'd go through for the ones we love even though we know there's really nothing that can be done. We've seen the zombie film done time and time again, such as in the comedic form (Shaun of the Dead, Life After Beth, Zombieland), the dramatic form (The Walking Dead) and the action form (Resident Evil), but what many of these films fail to touch on is how the outbreak directly effects the victim of the virus and their loved ones and this is exactly one of the reasons why Maggie stands apart from the rest of these kinds of films within the zombie genre.
Maggie, our titular character, is played by Abigail Breslin and the film begins with her telling her father (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that she's been bitten and that he's not to come for her. However, he does. Once he finds her at the hospital, he brings her home so that she can spend her last days with her family. The most important factor of this film is that Maggie is dying and there's no coming back from that. She will turn into a zombie and it's inevitable, which is why the film is a zombie film, however, there's a bit more to this particular sub-genre than that. Zombie films, while overtly disgusting and usually un-tasteful, constantly remind us our innate need to survive as a society. While most films within the genre build their worlds around this epidemic, the fall of society and the struggle to stay alive, Maggie takes a completely different route in exploring the different aspects of the zombie film. While there's an apocalypse occurring in the film, Maggie and her family are isolated from everything going on. They're far enough from the city to live peacefully for a while. But for how long?Zombie films repeatedly revolve around the theme of survival and Maggie could've taken the route of the typical zombie film and made itself about an impending zombie attack on Maggie and her family. But it doesn't. It's about death, but more so about the acceptance of death. We understand that death is coming and we all know that one day we have to die because this is just a fact. However, as we we sit back and watch these characters in other zombie films try to survive, we're sucked in the more they get attacked. Why? Because like them, we want to survive. We want them to survive because that need is biologically embedded in us. And it's because we're so focused on them surviving, we tend to forget that everyone eventually dies. Whether it be by a zombie bite, a gunshot to the forehead or old age, these people are going to die and Maggie, however, is based around this fact. Though Maggie still has a bit of humanity left in her as she transforms and she can function like a human, the reality of the whole situation is told to us again and again. Maggie is going to die and there's nothing that can be done. She's accepted this fact, but her family, on the other hand, has not.
Though we know little about Maggie and her family, we can see the toll that this virus has taken on them. Throwing out the idea that this film is a character study, like most other zombie films are, the point of it isn't to know these characters personally. Why? Because they're going to die, so the film doesn't need to create these in-depth introductions.We aren't supposed to explore their lives, partially because this epidemic has fully changed them to the point of no return. They're no longer the people they were, so the film strictly focuses on their interactions in the present with their dying daughter and how she lives out her last few days as a human. We get a bit of exposition simply because we need some sort of connection with these people, but, again, it's not the point on the film. It's striving to prove that there's more than guts, blood and other horrific elements to the zombie film.And it's as Maggie becomes more zombie-like that film transforms into the horror film it's advertised as, as most, if not all, zombie films are. There's guns, violence and blood and although the film is already slow,the further along she is in her transformation, the slower the film becomes. And the more grotesque and violent Maggie becomes, the more unnerved we are as every scene is ambianced with soft, unsettling music and even though Maggie hasn't completely gone full-on zombie, we know it's eventually going to happen and the scariest part is that we don't know when it's going to happen. Throughout the first half of the film, Maggie's parents ignore her virus. They know it's there, but they cover her wounds up with bandages and even Maggie wears sunglasses to cover up her newly turned icy-blue eyes, but soon it gets to the point where we can't ignore Maggie's transformation. And as Maggie slumps around the house, we're more uncomfortable that at any moment she's going to hurt someone rather than about the fact she's going to die.
While there's an importance on death in this film, there's more of an importance about the acceptance of death. Again, everyone knows Maggie is going to die, they just choose to try and ignore it until it happens, so Maggie takes things into her own hands and jumps off the roof. In a beautiful, fluid scene we don't see Maggie actually die, but we see the parts of her we didn't really get to explore of her life when she was alive. As Maggie frolicks through the flowers with he mother, we realize that not only is death inevitable, but there's also a beauty in it as well.
