Directed by:
Henry HobsonScreenplay:
John Scott 3Cinematography:
Lukas EttlinComposer:
David WingoCast:
Abigail Breslin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joely Richardson, Laura Cayouette, Dana Gourrier, Colin Walker, Mattie Liptak, Jessy Hughes, P.J. Marshall (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
A teenage girl in the Midwest becomes infected by an outbreak of a disease that slowly turns the infected into zombies. (official distributor synopsis)
Videos (6)
Reviews (8)
Terrence Malick's style farewell to his daughter. The concept is quite nice, but the way it is eventually put into practice is rather a letdown. The melancholic atmosphere works quite well, but in terms of acting it is not typical. What is telling is that pensive Arnie whose acting seems to be desperate and inappropriate is the better part of the central duo.
()
I was curious to see what this film was going to be like, but I really didn't expect to get this excited. This very original approach to the zombie genre is a welcome change, both Arnold and Abigail Breslin act great, the intimate gloomy atmosphere is quite palpable, everything feels entirely authentic. I'm sure I won't forget a number of scenes from Maggie and that I'll be watching it again soon.
()
A commendable attempt to make the world's most depressing film uses every mainstream cinematic device invented to induce despondency, namely gray filters, handheld camera, close-ups on faces, decimated landscapes, the American Midwest, dim artificial lights, and Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to act. As for the latter, he deserves a puppet for effort, but any acting credit is more a factor of his age than his actual training (plus, how is it possible not to unlearn that infernal Austrian accent in 50 years of living in the US). It's just that Maggie isn't just an instant purchase of trendy depression set in a profitable zombie apocalyptic universe. On the contrary, through its hopelessness and gratuitousness, it brings back to the perpetually scarred zombie genre a real tragedy and sensibility that has slowly disappeared from it due to the glut of movies, comics, and TV shows, and which previous creators have tried to induce with ever increasing panic by featuring younger and more innocent characters. In Maggie, the children are removed from the vicinity of the irreversibly infected protagonist (who is the physically atypical for a US film Abigail Breslin) right at the beginning of the film. For the rest of the film, we don't learn much about the characters and yet we sympathize with them, proving the universality of the sense of loss and the irreplaceability of the individual, the exact opposite of what the endless zombie shows or other franchises have taught us so far.
()
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who surprisingly acts and is believable, is definitely not the weak point of the film. Plus, he tried to tone down his accent a bit, which worked out pretty well. This film definitely deserves more attention than it has received, or more positive reviews, because while it doesn't change the genre, it definitely manages to come up with something that isn't traditional, and that works.
()
No, nothing for me. There is a synonym for boring and slow films called drama, an indefinable genre with exactly what I don't like in films. The film has a really minimal lick of horror, the only thing in common is the zombie theme but no zombies, so we're back to square one. I don't even know what to praise here, Maggie is ugly and unlikeable, I didn't care if she died at the end or not. I didn't enjoy Arnie's acting too much, mentally I'm sure he was reminiscing about holding a rotary machine gun in Terminator. The atmosphere was on a similar level to that of a school room during seminar paper called “The Battle of the Intellectuals”. Really a waste of time and partial suffering for me. 1* for Arnie, the second for having successfully finished it. 40%
()
Ads