If the prospect of seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger grapple with a zombie threat in a post-apocalyptic thriller has you on the edge of your seat, prepare to sit back and adjust your expectations. British graphic designer Henry Hobson’s debut feature film Maggie is a sombre arthouse drama in which Schwarzenegger has to flex his acting muscles for a change.
He plays a farmer whose beloved daughter, Maggie (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine), has become infected during a virus outbreak. After eight weeks in quarantine, Maggie is returned to her family farm where she finally ‘turns’ into a shuffling zombie.
As the drama unfolds, there are one or two flurries of action and some grim episodes of body horror, but for the most part the film’s tempo is as gradual as the progress of the virus.
That will be too slow for many horror fans, yet the measured pace allows Schwarzengger to show unaccustomed emotional depths as the grief-stricken father and gives former Oscar-nominee Breslin another chance to shine as the teenager whose mortality is cruelly written on her skin.
Certificate 15. Runtime 95 mins. Director Henry Hobson
Maggie is released on Digital HD on 16th November and Blu-ray and DVD from 23rd November 2015.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtyvEVqxtyI
