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Life
Thursday, May 21 - 27, 2015 Page 1 IB
Schwarzenegger surprises in zombie drama Maggie
by Lindsey Bahr
(AP) Would you stand by your
child if she was slowly dying of a
gruesome and highly contagious
illness? That’s the central question
that Arnold Schwarzenegger has
to face in Maggie, a terminal illness
drama where the malady at hand
involves morphing into a member
of the flesh-eating undead.
Director Henry Hobson’s film
imagines a world devastated by
zombies—although no one ever
says that word. Instead of turning
to genre conventions, though,
Maggie stays small, intimate, and
fascinatingly realistic.
Set in a small Midwestern
town, society is still tenuously
functioning amid the breakout.
Hospitals diagnose the afflicted
and set terms for mandatory
quarantines before the diseased
turn truly dangerous. The police,
also, are there to enforce. Other
institutions, though, are all but
abandoned. Gas stations are empty
and electricity is unreliable.
For many, life continues as
normally as possible. There are no
rogue bands of hostile survivalists
competing over bunkers and land
and no massive zombie armies
attacking. Maggie is a zombie
tale that is more interested in the
microcosm—the effects of the
virus on the family unit and the
community, not the shocks and
thrills of an all-out war.
If this seems like a surprising
choice for Schwarzenegger, it is.
Even more surprising? He’s pretty
great.
The heart of the movie is
the relationship between Wade
(Schwarzenegger) and his teenage
daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin).
She’s infected and missing when
the film starts, but Wade searches
for two weeks to find her and bring
her back to the country home that
he shares with his new wife (Joely
Richardson) and their young
children.
There, Wade waits for Maggie to
transform, trying to spend as much
time with her as possible in the
interim. Maggie, in turn, fluctuates
between all the emotions of dealing
with a life cut too short—and her
fatal, itchy and grotesque wound.
There are a few jump scares and
horror movie elements that help to
break up the melodrama. Maggie’s
carefully designed physical
transformation is punctuated by
frightening visions of what’s to
come—even if it’s unclear whether
they’re nightmares or symptoms.
Still, everything is restrained.
Schwarzenegger’s Wade only
resorts to violence when protecting
Maggie, and even those moments
seem to be done reluctantly. His
despair is evident in his physicality
and his eyes throughout.
Many of the scenes take place
around the dinner table—some
tense, some funny, but all with the
heavy fear of the inevitable hanging
over every moment.
Some of the more affecting
parts involve Schwarzenegger
weighing his options with various
friends. The horrifying reality
is that death is really the only
solution. The “how” is the question.
And yet, for as fascinating
as the conceit is (and as lean as
the movie is), the deep emotions
at play don’t really hit as well as
they should. Part of the problem
is the distracting look of the
film. Maggie appears as though
it was shot through a variety of
Instagram filters—a dusty grey
for the exteriors, and a warm,
oversaturated orange for the
interiors. Also, even at a brisk 95
minutes, the runtime feels like a
stretch.
Maybe Hobson—a title
designer in his feature debut—
wasn’t going for tearjerker, though.
Maggie, ultimately, is a
fascinating experiment in
genre that has captured a side
of Schwarzenegger that the
movies have not seen before—an
impressive, exciting and worthy
accomplishment in and of itself.
Maggie, a Lionsgate and
Roadside Attractions release,
is rated PG-13 by the Motion
Picture Association of America
for “disturbing thematic material
including bloody images, and
some language.” Running time: 95
minutes. Two stars out of four.