Maggie
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
This movie is one long lesson in the grieving process, but with the addition of presence of the person we’re grieving while we grieve their upcoming demise. Look, I know that sounds ridiculously complicated, but it’s not. Think about any terminal sickness, think about the inevitability of death, think about those who are not lucky enough to be taken quickly, and by surprise, but instead those who are given a number that is ticking down and at zero there’s nothing left. Now amplify that ticking out like ripples, like radiation, through everyone who knows you and cares about you. The fact that Maggie is turning into a zombie is not the main story here. The grieving of the loss of Maggie is the actual story, and it’s one that Maggie herself is a part of. This is watching the car wreck in slow motion, wondering how the participants are going to be affected, rooting for them even as they carom violently from whiplash. This was a really enjoyable movie to watch once, but I don’t think it has anything to offer for a second go-round. This is worth seeing for many reasons, but none of them urgent enough to prioritize it over anything else you’re excited about. This isn’t a very exciting movie. It’s a very slow study of a slow burn. I enjoyed it, but being the simple clapping popcorn throwing hooligan that I am, I do wish there’d been more… zombie… stuff in it. You know.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Everyone agreed that they were going to shoot primarily in grey and brown-scale.
- Ahnold retrieves his daughter from a hospital in the big city and drives her home to the farm
- Where they send away the farm kids, since you know; she’s going to turn into a zombie
- People keep asking what is gonna happen when they all know- she gonna turn into a zombie
- Ahnold defends his infected daughter from any and all, well, excepting a fox that really got the shitty end of the stick
- Maggie swan-dives off the roof, allowing Ahnold to grieve as a victim and not a shooter
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
The zombies here are awesome and sick and violent and gross and very very little. Far too little. Aside from some flashbacks of her getting bit, there’s really no zombie action. Zombie suspense, on the other hand… yeah, we got that. So… this is an infection based zombie outbreak, where you can live with the infection for a couple of weeks or months or so, but eventually you turn into one and start biting other people. There wasn’t really any corpses rising up, or really any transmission, to think it through. Everyone in this movie who was a zombie or infected was already that way when the movie started, so we just follow along as they all try to navigate the realities of an end of summer bonfire where two of the participants won’t see the next year start. The zombies were awesome, but very downplayed. This was a zombie movie that is not about zombies.
Where the money went
Where the money went
Dude. The money went to pay Ahnold. That, and all sorts of awesome and kinda creepy cinematography. The script was a napkin sketch at best, but… whatever they paid Ahnold, they got their money’s worth. I do not think I’ve ever seen him act anywhere to the degree that he does here. This Ahnold would never have settled for “Get to the chuppah!”, he would have hugged and cried it out. With his grizzled good looks and human empathy radiating from his crows-feet.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
Hmm. I think the only weapon was an axe. Well, that and, like, just Ahnold being able to Ahnold shit until it’s dead. But this movie wasn’t about violence, so the weaponry took a definite back seat. By dint of being cool and the only thing actually used, the axe wins it.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
I’ll keep it short and sweet. Aside from an arm bite, there’s nothing hand related here, nor is there anything devoted to zombie cannon, since this isn’t about zombies. It’s about human loss.
That was new!
That was new!
This whole approach was pretty new. I’ve seen other movies (and know of even more) where humanization of the zombies, or infected, is central to the plot, but I don’t think I’ve watched any “turning into a zombie” movies that handled the topic this well, meaning, this simply. This was an art film more than a movie, this was suspense more than horror. This movie lays out all it’s cards from the beginning, but still walks you through the narrative of how things came to be and how they will forever be changed going forward.
Review Notes
Review Notes
47 production company logos later…
Something about coming to the City and there’s a curfew. That’s bad.
NPR. Says that crops have caught the zombie virus and should be burned.
And Maggie is wandering around a ruined city.
Ahnold got a nice old truck
“The Turn.” An elevated sense of smell.
I’m just gonna call him The Big A. Ahnold. A. Alpha.
I’ll call her M.
Whoops. Busted for breaking curfew.
Lots of zombies strapped to gourneys.
A is wandering around in a… shelter for the infected. I thought it was a hospital.
A has aged, but it’s a good aged. Like cheese.
“She’s going to lose her appetite, then she’s gonna get it back again.”
Vern. Do it for Vern.
So… His daughter is infected? Is that the same girl we saw getting arrested?
I guess you can’t catch it from hugging.
“Stop picking at it.” No shit. Gross.
Uh… sunglasses… bullet casings…
A barking dog…
A zombie in the bathroom… A took care of him, though!
I think that means that the food and gas are free.
I… Call me an asshole, but I would have looted the fuck out of that place. Pickup truck would be low-riding, it’d be so full.
Very bleak cinema.
Is that mom?
Well, someone thinks so.
So, that’s Molly.
“What happened to your arm?”
So… zombie bites.
Kid got cahones.
Gets straight to the point, too.
Is that her stomach growling?
She’s contagious. Does that mean, like, no sneezing, or like, no biting?
So A is taking the other two kids to stay at an Aunt’s…
I don’t think mom is very happy to have her here.
Wearing sunglasses indoors isn’t endearing though, either.
And ripping up the official “So you’re turning into a zombie now” pamphlet isn’t that smart, either.
“Caroline and I, we know the precautions.” This is a polite way for saying “When you turn into a zombie we will kill you.”
Wow. Arnold is telling Maggie that she has to eat something. For him. Like, you know, yesterday’s Guide entry where I went into depth about my insanely religious grandmother trying to force Cheerios into me for Jesus. Damn cat is glitching.
Maggie… won’t eat, and isn’t wearing her bandages…
Yeah, mom, you’re kinda failing here.
You’re failing very, very badly.
No, she’s not going to understand.
And if you mean that you keep asking God, and he’s not giving you answers… does this mean he used to?
A landline phone?
Fred and Ken?
Out walking the ruined crops…
Fire! Fire! Eh! Eh!
Some toy soldier?
The Radio is not happy about the infected being out in the populace.
The tomatoes are kinda rotted.
A swingset?
A flashback!
She… fell off the swing… and… broke off her finger?
What the fuck? Or is it just bleeding all over the place?
Oh, shit.
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
Food disposal and black blood.
She’s got red on her but the red is black and that’s…
Why is she rubbing dirt in it?
Zombies? Arnold got an axe.
Arnold… well, the implication is that he chopped the little girl’s head apart.
So, the cops are here. Helpful fuckers.
Bonnie was hoarding zombies.
Holt is a hothead.
I think that’s Arnold’s sister-in law that they’re living with? I think Sarah is mom is dead.
Wow. Three bitching sneezes. That fucked me up.
Ahnold has the zombie-killer’s remorse.
Waking up in the dead of night… a vehicle approaching.
Ahnold has the double barrel…
Oh, shit. She’s got six.
It’s the wife and mother of the zombies he killed today.
You have a gun. You could have gotten in.
He was probably already bitten, idiot.
Bonnie… why did you want to come see this?
Ahnold down with the B&E.
I think he’s looking for zombie-proofing ideas?
Lotta dead flies.
A door with not enough locks on it.
Oh, fuck. They went out through the wall.
This is the most emotion I think I’ve ever seen Ahnold display.
Fox is eating shit it probably shouldn’t… I think zombie leavings.
Oh, that’s a gross looking bite Maggie has.
Oh, damn. She’s getting treated like shit ‘cause she’s a zombie. I mean, I wouldn’t want her babysitting my kids either.
“What good’s a finger when your arm is falling off?”
Yuck. A sample. Yuck. A sample. Yuck.
“Skin will start smelling like meat.”
So, the only medical way of killing her is a cocktail that produces agony? That makes no sense.
A cassette tape? I dig it. I dig it.
“Well, no desert for either of you!”
“Is that a threat, or a stay of execution?” Gallows humor, baby… it’s all we got.
“Morning light of the past”
“A Daisy’s Journey”
Another flashback to the bite…
Oh, there’s maggots. I mean, meal worms, but… it’s gross. I get it.
And the fox is sick, too, I think.
Maggots could be a good thing- you know, cleaning the wound and all.
A bunch of kids going out to the reservoir. I think one of the boys in the group is sick, too?
A nice young infected man waiting for you.
Gross. I don’t want to watch this.
Sparklers, flares, dry straw, slow motion, laughter
So this is what kids are into these days.
“How many people have other people locked away, you know?” Yeah. This is actually something I wonder about, and I think the answer is far more than we’d believe. I think people keeping other people captives is a pretty normal human aberration. Say, 10 times more common than cannibalism.
I think the sob story about what you would do to yourself is the best option that you really have.
Ugh. Teen emotions. I feel gross.
You *SHOULD* be scared!
Yay infected kissing!
Yay kinda-infected hugging!
“Are you sure? It smells like food.” It’s you smelling your aunt.
Maggie ain’t looking so good.
And Ahnold ain’t around.
Caroline brought scissors to a zombie fight. Better than nothing.
Fuck, am I really gonna stay up after this and do mycology shit? It’s late.
Oh, shit. Her boyfriend’s dad is outside with a shotgun.
Oh, shit. The police are here to do an extraction. And they are armed to the teeth.
Extraction complete. Really, what was there to do? He’s turning into a zombie. His opinions don’t count anymore. I’m sorry.
She hears a fox and is suddenly out for a hunt?
Oh. The fox is in a cage.
And she’s getting ready to hulk out on it.
This is not good.
She’s got red all over her mouth. She ate the fucking fox.
Oh. She wanted to… help it? That’s why she grabbed the shotgun?
I was not ware she wanted to help it. I thought it was all hunger and hunting from the start.
Oh, shit. That’s some gross American Pie kinda shit.
And the poor fox… is still alive somehow?
Not anymore, I guess.
Cooked bacon… good? Yum?
I like cooked bacon. Yum.
Oh, shit… that’s scary. She’s watching her own father sleep.
Ahnold brought an axe to a gunfight. And won.
Or…
Oh. Shit. There she is. She doesn’t look good.
She doesn’t sound good.
A field of daisies. I’m not sure how that’s going to help anything.
Ahh. The “promise me when the times comes…” ask.
Why can’t anyone take responsibility for their own suicide in this movie? It’s like a world where no-one ever considers killing themselves, they just put other people into impossible situations.
Why bother with an injection when you have a .12 gauge.
That’s the doctor’s personal opinion, too. I could have been a doctor.
Oh, shit, I think she’s gone full zombie.
Or man, she’s close. She’s way too close. Just let her go, dude. Let her go.
Oh… the dead feet walking down the stairs. It’s good. It’s good.
Better wake up, Ahnold.
She’s sniffing you, dude!
And… she gives him a kiss on the head. Whoah. That was fucking tense.
How did she get on the roof?
I guess that’s how she got down…
Damn.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
I have had quite the day. The van now has 50% less interior, starting at about the waist up. I pulled all the window interior plastics and both roof panels. Now I can get to the Rivnuts that are holding up the new roof rack.
Which, you know, I have to build. In order to fit the old roof basket onto the new van. When you transition from a jeep to a van, things don’t exactly swap over. It’s not as simple as deciding your vehicle identifies differently and might start arbitrarily using whichever sex’s bathroom is closer.
So, here is the thing that I’m actually pretty proud of. I didn’t break *anything*. Let me repeat that. I took the entire ceiling and half the plastics out of the van and I didn’t break anything. I did have to drill/kill a bolt out, but… that reminds me I still have half that bolt to deal with later. But I’m stoked for both the actual progress, as well as proud of myself for getting out there and doing something productive today.
I still can’t clean up the great blendered jellyfish shit still drying in the pantry, and I’ve already eaten 2 bags of Skittles. So… This is me on no noticeable amount of drugs and instead wired on sugar. My shoulders feel tight and my head feels swollen.
I have a sense of urgency that has nothing to do with urination, or anything else I can identify. I want to watch Rocky at 1.25 speed, with the volume up, so everyone sounds like a chipmunk. I think I’d be better off if I’d stuck to more natural consumables today than sour candy. I wonder what the most sour candy is?
I went on Amazon to check, and there is something called like, Toxic Waste Sour or something like that, and I was about to pull the trigger on a little over $30 in the sourest candies I could find, but then I had to think about the reality that I was about to spend a lot of money on colored, flavored, sugar. Covered in sour powder.
I just went onto Amazon and you can’t just order the sour powder by itself. However, you can buy both powdered chewing gum and powdered sour cream. I’m much more interested in the powdered chewing gum, but I have already been hurt by a bulk gum purchase decision; I ordered cases of Big League Chew and was happily drooling grape saliva all over myself and then I realized that it’s not sugar-less. So, it’s sugared.
Gum with sugar. Man, it used to be ok when we were kids. Everything was better back then. Even the news was better. Rivers catching fire, Space Shuttles catching fire, Michael Jackson catching fire. I was- and remain- completely fucking disappointed that all of Michaels secrets didn’t come tumbling out of the closet when he passed.
What did we really learn? That his eyebrows had been tattooed on or some other such bullshit. I want to hear about the wild MDMA parties when Bubbles was spinning and no-one knew Corey Feldman was waiting in the wings, practicing Michael’s moves, waiting for there to be a Michael Jackson shaped hole in the spotlight that needed filling.
I seem to have encountered somewhat of a processional Hard Stop there with that idea. I’m kinda standing at the tip of a peninsula, looking out into the sea while holding my slippers, hoping for a dry path to magically appear.
Speaking of, I want socks. Wouldn’t you know it? I half got up to go get some and noticed I was already sitting on a pair of them. Quite fortuitous, even though the harsh reality is that they’re actually my wife’s socks and she would ridicule me for wearing them. You know how couples have inside jokes? One of ours is that I frequently find myself wearing women’s clothing.
Not in anything as interesting as drag, but think out bargain-shopping at Goodwill, and finding a wicked expensive pair of thermal lined waterproof camo-fleece cold weather pants, and buying them for hella cheap, and then snowshoeing around for a couple days, where the fucking things won’t stay up on my hips, are pinching the fuck out of my crotch, and have the world’s shortest zipper known to man.
It wasn’t until I was trying to take a piss and bitching at the top of my lungs about everything wrong about the pants that I mentioned the zipper and then my wife asked to take a closer look at my bargain warmy-pants and the explained that they were women’s. I didn’t think I was a size 12, or whatever, but I just assumed it was foreign.
Soooo… that’s sort of a little anecdote about me cross-dressing while on a snow-shoe backpacking trip. Just, you know… as context for why my wife would be loving my wearing of her socks. It’s a good thing that she doesn’t read The Guide at all, only portions that I have the “read aloud” feature go over the next day sometimes when I kinda remember writing something but I want to make sure that what I remember and what I wrote match up.
My wife’s attitude towards my writing makes me feel like someone who has dedicated a large chunk of their life learning to play an obscure instrument, and when we were dating, she found it slightly kinda endearing in a quirky way, but now that we’re married, her interest has waned. Better it be that with my writing than our sex life, or her love of cooking. I’m not complaining in the least.
But were I to have an affair, I could publish it here for all to read, or… not read… and she would never know. I could admit to where the body is, and who else was there that night, and why they were taping with old Betamax equipment… and I’d walk, still a free man. Free to do anything and then come back and document it; and my wife would never know.
It’s sort of like the concept of hiding in plain sight, which is best demonstrated by the clipboard effect: Walk into any organization with nothing in your hands and you stick out like a sore thumb. Walk into any organization with a clipboard, pen, and nervous-tic-induced concentration, and people will let you walk into the inner sanctum.
I once completed a quarter pound drug transaction by throwing the bundle of weed, wrapped tight in a grocery store plastic bag, like a football to my customer, who both caught it and probably still tells the story today. I mean, it was a good pass. Of a lot (at the time) of (still) really good weed.
If anyone is keeping track, that’s another example of how I’m one of the people who have been put on the planet to provide the rest of you with stories. I’m a literally-inclined crash test dummy with a volunteering fetish. I go through the wringer, bounce off the dashboard, passenger door, and dashboard again before stilling into a quiet jumble half in the footwell and half out the busted window, and one MEOW later and I’m here at the keyboard, bobbing and weaving, trying to bring you back there to that moment with me, since you’re never going to encounter it yourself on that path you’re on.
If you caught the distain, you’re perceptive. Or possibly I’ve got my “Humanity” thing mis-calibrated again and this isn’t the moment when we all jump out with cheap plastic noise-makers and yell “SURPRISE!”. I mean, I sure am. I didn’t even know there was going to be a party. I was, however, told there would be Punch and Pie.
Yes, the caffeine is making itself known. I just ran off down a rabbit hole that involved not buying a bunch of Amazon shit for the van, as well as stalking Paul Stamets’ company to see if they had any positions that looked interesting. They did, but they’re the next state over, so that’s sorta hard to overcome.
That reminds me. I have an email that I have to take care of. A local university wants me to apply to their registrar’s office. Which, you know, I already did about 4 months ago, and it was the first of a new automated promotion of content by one of the career/networking sites, so I reached out to the head of the department thanking them for their personal attention.
‘Cause, you know… I assumed that they had written the email that purported to have come from them, to the degree of including their name and title. No. Complete automated algorithm. Great way to feel like you went to school in your underwear here in the digital age.
Or maybe that’s what makes it so damn embarrassing- this isn’t “the digital age”. This is real life. And that- “The Digital Age”… that’s dead vocabulary. Like “Telegraph” and “Meerschaum” and “scrimshaw”. And “Paddy-Wagon”. Although, I of course will still use that last one. And any of the others that are fading away like Gaiman’s Gods as inattention decays them to gods.
Yes, I did eat a bunch of aborts earlier, and yes, they are making themselves known. You know, it’s hard to know that Mel Gibson is such a piece of shit and still really enjoy watching… Fuck. I forgot what movie of his I was suddenly feeling passionate about. And yeah, that was an intentional pun and no, that’s not the fucking movie I can’t think of. Shit. It’s gone. It might come back.
Anyway, I’m feeling like something a little deeper than usual, and I don’t think I want funny, so I’m going with one that has always felt sort of like it was itself a little bit out of the genre. Maggie. “When a deadly zombie virus sweeps the nation, a father will stop at nothing to save his infected daughter in this post-apocalyptic thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin.”
This pretty much tells us nothing other than it’s a zombie movie with Ahnold and some girl. I have no idea who she is. Maybe I should? But I’ll watch this and see if it inspires me to look further into who she is. Although, reading that back, that just sounds like I’m making a bargain with myself whether or whether not to stalk some kid actress. That is REALLY not my intent. I got all my stalking out of my system in high school.
Ummm…. I guess this is also my forum to anonymously apologize to people who don’t know me for weird shit that I shouldn’t have done. I’m sorry for all that weird shit I shouldn’t have done. I feel somewhat better. I don’t think they heard me, though.
I regret eating all that candy. I wish I had it now to eat. I think this is going to walk the fine line between tender and brutally violent. It’s too much to hope for a statement of intent to return, though. It’ll really make me happy if they worked it in, though. You know, I’m gonna bust this review out and then rock me some mycology shit. I’m feeling it. Time to cook up some new coco coir fruiting medium, and it’s time to cook some popcorn, motherfuckers!
But first… A zombie movie. And then? Then… Ah’ll be bahk. Ok. I stepped away for much longer than anticipated. My wife ordered us a couple copies of a sort of “Love Languages” type book and we’re reading it together and going to talk about it this upcoming weekend. So I got my reading in. I hope the things I’m noting out for future conversation are the kinds of things that she wants me to be looking for.
Since this was something suggested by her therapist and then relayed to me through her as a request, the whole thing feels a bit like trying to complete an essay for history class when you’ve been home sick for a couple weeks and you have a friend bringing you the assignments and stuff.
I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing for who, but since she wants me to, I’m doing. I guess she’ll tell me if I’ve done it wrong. Speaking of doing things wrong, of failures, I can’t stop wearing nearby liquids. I just spilled coffee on myself, and earlier when I was doing mycology shit, I got cake-water (think about it like vegetable piss) splashed all over me.
So yeah, it’s been a bit of a messy yet hella productive day. I’m bahk. Oh. And I think I have a cyst or something starting behind my left ear. There is a painful bump where there wasn’t one. I suppose I should have my wife look at it, being a nurse and all. Maggie. Damn, now I’ve got Rod Stewart in my heart and he’s singing… damn, that man can sing.