If you’re looking for a drama that confronts issues of mortality, relationships and identity and happens to have zombies, then watch tv series like The Walking Dead, Les Revenants and In The Flesh. If I reviewed Maggie like a restaurant, I would say great atmosphere and staff, but the meal is not satisfying.
Ultimately Maggie fails to deliver because the story is not strong-there are two sets of foreboding foils to say, “Do you get it! THEY ARE JUST LIKE MAGGIE AND HER DAD!!!!;” the palette is a cliche, overly ponderous-everything is gray except for a brief color-infused flashback; and the direction is muddled-extreme close-ups and an obsession with focusing on characters’ backs. For me, it isn’t enough to say, “See! There is no sensational violence, and there are zombies” because the French have already done that and more. I also need a strong story, and there isn’t one. I also thought that the presence of old technology such as the rotary phone and the truck, while it added to the general sense of decay and unfairness of who and what survives was more affectation than essential.
I think that the story would have improved if Maggie as a movie answered some crucial questions. How old is Maggie? Was she an adult when she went to the city or a runaway teen? Maggie is not watched closely by her family, which seems negligent since she is becoming a zombie, but particularly bad if she is supposed to be a kid. These factors are crucial to help me understand the central relationship between the father and daughter. It is supposed to be a good one largely without conflict, but Maggie implies that she ran away yet this tension is not explored or explained in the film. I know that death and illness have a way of wiping away the negative and creating a sense of nostalgia for a past that never existed, but it also has a way of exacerbating existing tensions before the end. I’m not going to take for granted, especially in this day and age, that fathers and daughters are automatically filled with love for each other and are willing to do anything to protect each other.
The acting is great, and I don’t understand why people are surprised. Arnold Schwarzenegger is smarter than you and me, and he has been in the biz since the 60s. He played the Governor of California for 8 years. Give the guy some credit. Abigail Breslin has never put in a bad performance. If I have to complain, it is about this idea of vague Midwest and what accents actors are supposed to portray. Which city? Which state? These things matter, especially considering that Maggie’s father uses his connections to hold sway in his hometown and the big city. Little details add to the credibility of stories. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think that it was there. I’m getting tired of hysteria and mob mentality getting depicted by a thick country indeterminate accent without earning it.
Maggie is a noble failure filled with good intentions, but failed potential. If you must, watch it streaming at home. I paid $12, and I don’t regret it because I love Coolidge Corner and sat in an armchair theater that seats fourteen people and was armed with a delicious tub of real butter on freshly popped popcorn. Maggie is for fans of the actors as long as they sign a waiver to watch a deliberately paced story that ultimately punks out on its central question.