Maggie May o8, 2o15

Okay, have we had enough flesh eating zombie movies, TV shows . . . yet? I mean it was 1968 when Georgie Romero and his buddies got drunk in a Pittsburgh bar and came up with the idea: “Hey! Wouldn’t it be cool if we brought the dead back to life and they go on an eating frenzy? A HUMAN FLESH eating frenzy!” Ain’t it old . . . yet? I mean, we’ve had slow moving flesh eaters, fast moving eaters, dancing zombies, action movie zombies, horror flick zombies, comedy and romantic zombie films . . . HAVEN’T WE HAD ENOUGH . . .  YET?! Well, the answer is, absolutely . . . NOT!

Maggie is a domestic drama about how a family (and community) deals with a young family member who’s contracted the incurable and extremely contagious disease, “The Romero Scourge.” Okay, they don’t call it that, of course. It IS a flesh eating Zombie movie,  but unlike the usual Zombie action film, Maggie is slow paced. The action is mostly internal dealing with the mental and physical turmoil that erupts when a family member is exposed to a deadly and highly contagious disease. The progression of the disease is also slow taking up to eight weeks before the infected “turns” and tries to eat everybody in the house. The “bitten” has basically two choices: A. Be committed to a hell hole of a hospital and await with other infected people the inevitable or B. Return to your home to be watched over by the local doctor and, again, wait out the time before you turn into a flesh eater surrounded by family and friends.

The cast is just brilliant. Joely Richardson as Carol Vogal struggles beautifully with the desire to be a dutiful wife and her fear for her children’s welfare when her husband brings the infected Maggie (Carol’s stepdaughter) home. And Abigail Breslin is perfect as the runaway daughter who gets infected by some random flesh eater and decides she needs her father. And Arnold as the stoic Wade Vogal, the father determined to protect his daughter no matter what the cost is? Well, Arnold is just superb. It’s not so much that Arnold’s work in this film is better than anything he’s ever done, it’s more like it’s a totally different style for Arnold, and to be honest about it, I never thought him capable of performing the “art film” style.

And yes, Maggie is definitely an art film. Not a lot of physical action in this movie. It’s more of a study of the internal action of the characters. There’s a scene in the opening where Wade and Maggie are taking her half brother and sister to their aunts, and Carol stands on the porch, big smile on her face, waving goodbye to her children as they go to a “safer” location. Then we cut a scene of Carol sitting in her chair in the kitchen and thinking about the danger that Maggie’s presence presents to her, her husband and their children. It’s an extremely moving scene without a bit of dialogue in it. There are lots of scenes like that one in this movie where we watch people think, contemplate the serious of the situation they are in and decide how to best deal with the given circumstances that fate has stretch out before them.

There’s a lot of good, subtle stuff going on in this movie that you might miss if you don’t watch it more than once. I know after my first viewing of it, I didn’t think much of it. But something told me that I should watch it again. And the second time around I saw things about it that I had taken for granted. The movie Maggie is a sort of a animated painting, and like a painting it demands that you look at it for a long time and allow it to work its magic on you. So, give this small film a look see. You may like it.