Maggie
Maggie, a movie about how small families, individuals, and groups of friends deal with the fallout of a zombie epidemic, is a meditation on career choices.
First, it wouldn't have come on my radar if it didn't star Arnold Schwarzenegger as a father grieving for his slowly un-dying daughter, instead of his usual turn as a human bulldozer. It's too low key and, while it does a decent job of aping The Fly's subtext of using a horror trope as a wasting disease, it doesn't do it well enough to be heard above all the other voices shouting for attention. Casting Schwarzenegger is the movie's way of loudly clearing its throat.
Director Henry Hobson almost makes it work. He sets the mood well, building a world where we can believe families – and society at large – start to deal with such an epidemic. Some artistic decisions muddle the waters, however. There are background mentions of crops helping spread disease, used as an excuse for some moody scenes of Arnold backlit by burning fields. It's just never clear why, and wondering about such things pulls me out of the story. Should I worry about what the family is eating, on top of everything else? Or are they saying that zombies hide in the tall grass?
Those are not as distracting as the various goofs, though, like lost fingers re-appearing and disappearing, cataracts clearing and coming back, make-up becoming lighter or heavier. You should be more careful in a movie where you're telling us how sick a character is based on glued-on prosthetics.
The same way you should (circling back to career choices) do something about Schwarzenegger's grimace.
Nobody ever accused Conan of being subtle, and he's doing his best to act restrained here, but his facial range is limited to three options: smiling, blank, and scowling. The first two fall away as the story progresses and Maggie deteriorates, and glaring becomes the default state. He's not cut out to play someone who has the self-imposed burden of choosing if he's going to hand his decaying daughter over to the authorities for a painful death by poison or kill her himself when the time comes.
It's a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't situation. Don't try your hand at a movie like this, and people mock you about being 68 and still trying to be The Terminator. Do, and your decision to branch out feels like a late-life audition tape for dramatic roles with better directors.
Maybe he should have tried his hand at different styles 15 years ago instead of running for governor. Can't say if it would have made him a better actor, but he'd have had a shot at his peak. You can't wait until nobody pays for your usual schtick before trying to make your Dead Poets Society or Truman Show.
His fumbling indecision echoes through Maggie, leading to a resolution that is both the best scene in the movie and, in being too little and too late, acts as a synecdoche of what brought him here.
Maggie does a decent job of representing the human cost of a horror story. However, unintentionally, it does an even better one on the price of putting off decisions until it's too late.
Originally published in my old blog.
#drama #maggie #arnoldschwarzenegger #abigailbreslin #henryhobson