November
24, 2016
Maggie – US, 2016
It
probably would look something like this. By this,
of course, I mean a zombie apocalypse. It wouldn’t be sudden or instantaneous;
you wouldn’t be able to count down the time it took for someone to turn
animalistic and lose all of his humanity. If a zombie-like state were real, it
would likely arrive as a plague, as a slow-moving virus that slowly eroded both
the physical body and the human spirit until all that remained was a disheveled
body being controlled by one’s basest instincts. It wouldn’t be understood
completely, and in the absence of an immediate remedy, there would be panic,
new laws, the stripping of rights – the list goes on. Its closest resemblance would
be the early days of the AIDS virus, only on a much more horrific scale.
This is
the world depicted in first-time director Henry Hobson’s Maggie. Like Signs and
many of the best films of the genre, Hobson grounds his film, limiting its
scope to just one town and one family. Playing against type is Arnold
Schwarzenneger as Wade Vogel, a family man and farmer. In the film’s opening
moments, we hear a message from his daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) telling
him that she has returned but not to attempt to find her. Wade, as expected,
leaves immediately. He finds Maggie, infected, in a hospital, and, after learning
that she does not pose an immediate threat to society, takes her home. It is
what we would expect a father to do.
What
follows is a study in what happens when fear and panic threaten to tear at our
common humanity. There are some people that abandon the infected, sending them
off to be quarantined for the remainder of their cut-short lives (and to a much
worse future if what we learn about the quarantines in one scene is accurate);
some who cling to the infected too long, putting both themselves and their
neighbors at risk; and others who feel the need for one last meeting, one last
hug, one last touch before the inevitable occurs. Maggie triumphs in these moments. In one of the most tender scenes,
Maggie meets with friends from school for the last time, and we clearly see the
pain of these final good-byes.
Other
moments in the film depict choices that no person should have to make, such as
when Wade comes face to face with two neighborhood children who have been
infected with the virus. They have clearly succumbed to the virus, yet Wade
still knows them by sight and calls out to them by name. One is just four years
old. I can’t imagine the emotional toll such scenes would take on one person,
let alone an entire nation. And Maggie isn’t at all
ignorant – she knows that their fate could soon be hers.
As Joe,
Schwarzenneger reveals a side to him that he has not shown often enough. Gone
is the super-human character that inevitably performs incredible feats of
strength, replaced by a quieter, much more subdued character. For the first
time that I can recall in a Schwarzenneger film, I could sense the weight of
the world on his shoulders and see the emotional toll of his character’s
situation. In many scenes, Hobson strips away the actor’s standard bravado, revealing
a character who pushes on, not because he can, but because he must. To do
otherwise would be the beginning of his demise. Wade the kind of role he should
play at this stage in his career, and if he keeps at it, he may just upend
commonly-held misperceptions of his range as an actor.
I’m not
saying that Maggie is a game-changer
or that it will one day be hailed as one of the best of its genre. The movie is
a bit too bleak, and it telegraphs its finale much too far in advance. Yet, sometimes
that’s a good thing, for when a story has a logical conclusion, it’s hard to
fault it for ending as expected. In truth, I became invested in these
characters much more than I did those in more standard films of this genre, and
I was moved by the inherent decency of many of the characters, from Wade’s wife
Carolyn (ably played by Nip Tuck’s
Joely Richardson) to the kind, yet blunt family doctor (Jodie Moore) and Sheriff
Ray Pierce (Douglas M. Griffin) caught between enforcing the law and giving a
friend a little more time with his dying daughter. In the end, Maggie is not flashy or spectacular, and
those looking for scenes depicting mobs of zombies ravaging the streets of
American cities should look elsewhere. Those looking for a quieter contemplation
on life, love, and family, though, should give Maggie a chance. I’m certainly glad I did. (on DVD and Blu-ray)
3 stars
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