No this is not a US remake of BBC Scotland’s 1980s hit TV show Maggie. I was hoping but no it was……a zombie movie, another one, in an already overcrowded field. I’m nothing if not fair so I gave it a chance.
Arnold Schwarzenegger steps into a role unfamiliar to his fans and the general movie public and I have to say more strength to the actor. Here in Maggie he dials down the tough-guy hero and despite still being a rather large chap he plays ordinary.

Alongside this pleasant change, the actors, director and writer had decided to approach a very tired and worn out film-type and inject something different into it. Human emotion, the impact on the family and the country, because in Maggie the government has controlled the outbreak, let’s face it as much as some like to complain about politicians, scientists and experts in the scenario they would get on top of it, not perfectly, as the film portrays, but it would be controlled.
There’s no hope here, it is bleak as the scenery and cinematography shows us throughout. Grey, washed-out, cloudy with crops in the fields seemingly failing. It is a conceit, but it works for the film, it really works.

The process of dying from the infection is long, drawn-out and painful and the victim is fully aware of what his happening to them and what will happen. Like old age really and like old age some victims and their families cannot accept and try to run from the inevitable and others accept it.

It seems a harsh thing to say but Maggie could easily have had cancer or another terminal illness and the story, with a few tweaks could have stayed the same. Ramping it up to a ‘zombie’ virus and shoving Arnie front and centre makes the prospect of Maggie much a much interesting viewing.

Arnold himself makes a good stab as a genuinely ordinary man, and for once nothing is made of his obvious accent, he just has one, it is the USA after all, and many people end up there seeking their fortune. Throughout he is sombre and the relationship with this second wife, Joely Richardson is believable as it is with Breslin’s Maggie, another great performance by the young zombie-film veteran, both seem ordinary and actually make decisions you can believe people would make in the situations they are in.

The pace of the story is slow and full of melancholy and has little in the way of out and out horror or even many zombies. The horror of the film is in the situation everyone finds themselves in as the crushing weight of what is happening bears down on them all and affects them in many ways.

Maggie is a zombie film as interesting and unique as ‘The Battery’ which is praise indeed. The big three hitters Schwarzenegger, Richardson and Breslin play this as a straight drama and that is the strength of the story, it grounds everything in a familiar reality that makes an all-to-familiar and fantastic premise seem possible.

First-time director Henry Hobson has made a zombie film that I thought about days and days later when usually the stumbling dead are forgotten about a few minutes after the credit roll.