Purely Joyful Movie!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Nice effects though.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Underrated Masterpiece. I really enjoyed Schwarzenegger in this role. He looks so depressed and tired. In maybe 100 years future critiques will look back to this movie and will see it as one of the most important zombie movies of all time. Not concerning its impact, but for its artistic value. It is moving slowly - together with a great Schwarzenegger performance - slow, sad, grotesque, disturbing, and brilliant. Watch it. (but if you are looking for an action-packed Zombie-film, look somewhere else). Then this movie is not for you.

This film is bleak and ultimately pretty boring. Unfortunately. Because I like the premise and the take on the zombie genre.The premise is simple: Arnie plays Wade, a farmer/father just trying to look after his daughter after she gets bitten by a zombie and begins the multiple week transformation into a zombie. This creates the chance for the nuance of the zombie genre to really flex its metaphorical undertones and really have a slow paced and personal look at the ramifications of dehumanising someone into a monster. I dig the hell out of that. Zombies are more than just flesh eating creatures and this takes a dig at trying to explore how transformations destroy relationships, the community, and even the person dealing with their inevitable loss of personhood. It becomes a story analogous to knowing your loved one will die of a terminal illness in two weeks and the hardship that causes.Unfortunately this brilliant idea gets bogged down in utterly dull banality. It's. Just. So. Dull. It took me I think 15 minutes before the thought occurred to me: this must be a first time director. And it is! The pacing is so off. I decided to watch it because it was only an hour and a half (and not including credits it's less than that) so figured hey, nice quick movie to enjoy at the end of the day. Nah. What ensues is a director more focused on silent inconsistently shaky shots of characters (mostly Arnie) brooding and having some kind of internal struggle over some super important element of the story but after the hundredth artsy cut away shot or silent 20 second scene it feels like this just didn't have enough content for a full length film. It's soooo sllooowwww. I checked MULTIPLE TIMES to see how much time I had left until the end because I just wanted this to be over but I'd invested too much time to give up on it. I wanted it to redeem itself. I wanted it to lift itself up out of the bland drudge through the slow decay of Abigail Breslin's character (the titular Maggie) into something more poignant, or at least... interesting. But it doesn't. Any tension by the end and replaced with frustration. You know where this is going the moment it starts.The characters aren't interesting. Arnie plays a father figure. That's... about it. What does he like? He likes keeping his daughter around. There's a scene where they actually seem to bond with each other and are a proper father/daughter duo. The rest I don't care. All the other characters? Well I have the cast list open in a separate tab in case I feel like checking names because I don't know a single one. I can't think of any defining traits about these people besides the archetypes they're meant to fit into for the sake of narrative elements. There's the... (switches tab) step-mother? Oh I thought she was her aunt. Caroline. Who... is just present for someone to be uncomfortable about the whole situation. There's the two cops (who Arnie clumsily reveals he is close friends with through heavy handed expositionary dialogue) who warn Arnie that they'll intervene if Maggie goes too far. They're interchangeable nobodies who exist to serve a single purpose and I feel no reason why who they are affects the plot in any way.The cinematography, much like my experience for an hour and a half, is bleak. The colour grading is overdone. It doesn't so much set the tone as demand you feel sad. We get it dude, you were a scene kid when a teenager. You're very excited to show us your latest film school project. It genuinely just feels like if someone slowed down a heavy metal music video but then removed all the music, sporadically added dialogue, then slowed it down way too much. It hurts me. It hurts me so bad.This movie is meant to have a soul. It really should and I know it wants to be a deep examination of a little girl losing her humanity before her eyes and the pain it's causing her father but he just comes off as distant and flat. This was a good draft that just never got rewritten to really hit the nail of all the ideas it was going for on the head.

RELEASED IN 2015 and directed by Henry Hobson, "Maggie" stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a father in the Midwest who must deal with his teen daughter (Abigail Breslin) after she becomes infected by an outbreak that slowly morphs people into cannibalistic zombies. He has up to eight weeks to (1.) take her to a fatal quarantine, (2.) give her poison, (3.) shoot her in the head or (4.) allow her to become a zombie and threaten everyone around him. Joely Richardson plays the concerned stepmother, Rachel Whitman Groves a neighbor with the same problem and Raeden Greer a friend of Maggie's (Breslin).This is a low-key horror drama rather than a horror thriller, like most zombie-oriented flicks. The story presumably takes place several months after the events of "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) and near the beginning of "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), not that "Maggie" is connected to George Romero's classic zombie movies. I wonder if the story takes place during that general timeframe because the phones and vehicles seem to indicate this, not that it really matters."Maggie" takes the material dead seriously with a downbeat tone akin to "Stake Land" (2010), but without the action/adventure. I could take the one-note maudlin air IF there were enough interesting things to maintain one's attention, but the movie is burdened by frustrating characters and miscellaneous illogic or unconvincing things that needed worked out of the script. I'm not going to say more because I don't want to ruin the movie for potential viewers. Let's just say that the father's a clueless doofus and the stepmother, doctor and cops are all wise.Abigail Breslin was 18 during shooting and is one of the cutest girls to walk the face of the earth, but don't expect any of that here. (Not that you would since her zombie disease escalates during the course of the story and she therefore gets increasingly unattractive, to put it nicely).THE FILM RUNS 95 minutes and was shot in the New Orleans, Louisiana, area. WRITER: John Scott 3.GRADE: C-

This script is OK at times - and I do give high praise for getting this film made. Look - I have no idea what went into the production of this story, but Maggie could have been an instant classic if they made two simple decisions: fix the incoherent premise and then have an ending where Arnold at least tries to save the day! The rules of this story are that a zombie apocalypse has taken place and if kids are bitten the local government allows their parents to take them home until the transformation happens. When the transformation happens, the parents must bring the kids to the quarantine area to be exterminated. Now - what kind of a government would realistically do this? But, for the sake of zombie-lore and dramatic tension let's say the government does allow this to happen. There is no cure. The kids they get bit. The kid will meet a tragic fate. Everyone is miserable. The end. I understand that the story is about loss and saying goodbye - but there was no conflict going on. Arnold did not try to find a cure. He barely fought to save his daughter. Arnold did not get aggressive. There are streaks of brilliance in the story - such as when Arnold sees a girl zombie and stares at the destruction his own family will soon endure. There is good acting, good cinematography - but the problem with the film is that the character's never change and there is no real conflict that drives the plot forward. Arnold should have fought to save his child - perhaps he falls short - but that is a story audiences can get behind. For a film to be a tragedy a character has to sow the seeds of their own destruction. Without that arc - than the movie is just a downer. Like watching someone get hit by a car. It's sad. But its' not tragic. This movie is sad - but it could have been a tragic masterpiece.