Maggie

Art zombie horror? Daddy Vogel brings his infected daughter home and spends the last two weeks of her life with her. Maggie is no blockbuster and it’s quality is on a level with some of the worse episodes of the Walking Dead series, but Hobson does good work with the atmosphere of utter despair and depression a little like what you feel on a Sunday afternoon. There is a basic lack of story and nothing interesting happens until the second half when her transformation becomes slightly apparent. But the main surprise is Arnold who, in his role as a pensive farmer displays, his greatest acting attributes - a grim expression and sparse lines - in this mode he is fantastic and I hope he uses it in some more viewer-friendly movie. But I am pleased with him, you have to experiment. Are we still people? (10/05/2015)

Arnold fans probably won’t be very happy with this atypical role for him in an atypical film, but I think he managed it well. On an emotional level it works mainly because nobody speaks too much (which is good, especially for Arnold), everyone goes around broody and sad, suffering in silence. The plot is basically non-existent, it’s just a moody 80-minute farewell to a daughter. Anyone willing to get in the mood, will enjoy it. 7/10 (09/05/2015)

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. (03/08/2015)

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. (16/09/2018)

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. (02/11/2015)