Maggie, a teenage girl, becomes infected during an outbreak in the Midwest of a disease that slowly turns people into zombies. Her father Wade has to fight to stay by her side as she succumbs to the horrible disease.
I’m going to say this right up front: This ain’t your average zombie gorefest. And that’s a very good thing. Yep, “Maggie” isn’t like Walking Dead or Dawn of the Dead or any other “Dead” zombie title. This is a dramatic movie about a man, Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger) whose daughter, Maggie (Abigail Breslin) becomes infected during an outbreak that very slowly turns people into zombies. They’re conscious for most of the duration of the disease, and are fully aware that they’re going to turn into a shambling monster that eats human flesh.
Can you imagine the horror of watching and feeling your body die day-by-day as you transform into a zombie? Yikes!
It’s not a tumor!
The last week of March 2015 saw the release of the trailer for “Maggie”. Upon the news of any zombie movie nowadays, yours truly is highly skeptical and watches the trailer with critical eyes to see if it has anything in it that hits the huge and ever-growing list of zombie movie clichés. Guess what? This one doesn’t.
If you watch the trailer you’ll see that there isn’t a single frame of a mob of zombies running after people, or shots of zombies chowing down on their hapless victims and eating them alive, or a zombie tsunami splashing up on a wall that was built around a city to keep them out. None of that is in the trailer, which tells me that this is a movie with genuine feelings, about actual realistic people trying to cope with a horrible infection. It’s a human story. Zombies are just the back drop, and I love that!
It’s OK Maggie, you don’t have worry about that Twinkie obsessed madman coming after us. I’ll protect you from him.
I saw this trailer and was just blown away by the raw, emotional content of it. While Schwarzenegger isn’t well-known as a dramatic actor, it’s clear that he went to a place that he’s never attempted before to portray the tormented father who despairs as his daughter slowly wastes away before his eyes.
The dramatic mood is palpable in this piece. Despair, torment, sorrow, mourning. It’s all there. Seriously, the only thing close to it that we’ve seen recently is “The Returned” (2013), which by the way, is another fantastic zombie movie with a huge human element to it that isn’t watered down or written horribly, like say, “The Walking Dead”. Yes. I said it. You’re welcome.
If you’re looking for a zombie movie that doesn’t jump feet first into a vat of overdone clichés and cannibalistic feeding frenzies, you’ll want to see”Maggie.” It’s part art-house, part drama, part medical thriller, part zombie movie. What’s there not to love?
“Maggie” is slated to play at the Tribeca Film Festival April 22, 2015 and will be released in a limited theater run May 8, 2105.
