Maggie is an indie horror drama set in the not-so-distant future. The new virus turns people into zombies, slowly but surely. Many have fallen, there is still no cure or vaccine, and none of that is in sight. One of the infected is Maggie (Abigail Breslin), a young girl who was bitten by one of the infected zombies. She runs away from home to keep her family safe, but her father, Wade (Schwartz), follows her and brings her home. Authorities have allowed her to spend some time at home, but when she begins to feel the first symptoms of transformation, she must return to quarantine and spend her last hours there. The time they have left together is invaluable, but with every grain of sand that flows in the hourglass, their pain grows stronger, and the knowledge of the inevitable becomes increasingly difficult.
This is the debut film of director Henry Hobson, as well as screenwriter John Scott, and they did a very good job, using the very popular world of zombies as a stage for their truly emotional and serious drama. So it’s not about zombies, it’s not about the apocalypse. It is about people, their feelings, emotions, love, fear and despair, about human souls who walk the path to the inevitable horrors of the most terrible nightmares, where they have to make impossible choices.
Everything in this film is in the function of creating a melancholic atmosphere that lies heavy on the soul. The music is slow with sad tones rolling down your nerves. The photo and all the colors are in some weird gray-brown sepia tone, and so are the locations (cornfields in flames, empty streets, buildings, depressed farms, etc.). Everything worth living has been sucked out of this world, there is no hope, no joy, and all that is left is the inevitable end with which the actors of the story must come to terms.
Here I have to praise the roles of Arnold and Abigail. Arnold is a legendary movie star, an action hero who has saved the world countless times, but he doesn’t look like he’s playing in a project like this. He is much older now and many years have passed since his golden age, but those same years bring him a kind of seriousness in his acting and I think maybe he can still play his best role in the years to come. Abigail is also great, just as we are used to from her.
