Review of Maggie (2015) by Ryne D — 18 Jul 2015

I loved this movie. It was everything I'd hoped it would be. It perfectly captures the dark emotional struggle of loved ones turning into zombies. The fact that the transformation is a slow burn makes it much tougher to deal with than in something like The Walking Dead or Twenty Eight Days Later where the transformation is much quicker and more survival oriented; thus less time to think about it.

The zombies we do see are characters we haven't met so it's easy to watch Arnold take them out because they're already monsters. Schwarzenegger delivers his best dramatic performance, possibly since he doesn't have much dialogue that he has to chew through.

Abigail Breslin also does a fantastic job as the titular character and dealing with the pain of slowly turning into a monster. Maggie is everything fans of the Dead Island trailers wanted, and is probably the best zombie film I've seen because it deals with the struggle of infected loved ones in a way that most films in the genre tend to substitute with excessive blood and gore.

We forget, as we happily watch Rick and Daryl gloriously dispatch decomposing undead, that they used to be people. Maggie shows the very human pain of turning into the inhuman undead.