Maggie is a 2015 post-apocalyptic horror drama film, directed by Henry Hobson.
In the wake of a Zombie Apocalypse, young Maggie Vogel is bitten and infected by the Necroambulist virus, which slowly turns her into a cannibalistic zombie. She runs away to protect her family, while her father, Wade, searches for her.
The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin in the main roles. It was due to premier at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, but after Lionsgate bought the distribution rights, was eventually released at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, before seeing a limited theatrical release.
Tropes:
- After the End: The film takes place in the aftermath of a Zombie Apocalypse, caused by the necroambulist virus. In a more realistic take (if a zombie movie can be called realistic), the zombie apocalypse itself was overcome, and society and government remain in place with fairly little change. However, the necroambulist virus is still out there thanks to zombie stragglers, and measures are in place to prevent another major outbreak, with euthanasia being the only known recourse for infection.
- Alien Blood: Those infected with the necroambulist virus bleed a black fluid.
- Apocalypse How: Class 1, if not 0. The plague is essentially contained, whatever chaos that was already happened, and the government and services are still going steady. However, dialogue suggest a pretty severe depopulation already happened and a lot of things are done ad-hoc.
- Black Eyes of Evil: Late stages of infection cause severe subretinal bleeding, while the blood at this point is a black ooze. This is considered one of the signs of being "turned". It's not made clear if the infected can still see by then, given how they mostly use their sense of smell.
- Character Title
- Cosy Catastrophe: For a given value of "cozy". It's a world where a zombie plague was for the most part contained, and except for a curfew and quarantine being in place, things go like normal, to the point where school is going to start again soon.
- Driven to Suicide: Maggie jumps off the roof to her death at the end, as she enters the final stage of the infection.
- Dying as Yourself: Maggie chooses to end her life on her own terms before the sickness fully claims her.
- Death Seeker: The infected Nathan and his daughter were very cavalier about being axed to death by Wade, not even bothering to resist when he moves in to Mercy Kill the two of them despite both having fully turned into zombies and evidently having been so for some time.
- Eye for an Eye: It's all but said aloud that Bonnie came to Vogel's house to kill the infected Maggie after learning that Wade had to kill Bonnie's husband and daughter.
- Fate Worse than Death: As if turning into a zombie wasn't bad enough, being quarantined makes it worse. Patients are simply crammed together in a pen-like structure and as they slowly succumb to the virus, they start eating each other, with nobody controlling the situation beyond keeping them locked inside and performing euthanasia on the really badly sick.
- Father's Quest: After his daughter gets infected with a zombie plague and runs off to protect her family, Wade goes to find her. He then spends the rest of the film trying to protect her.
- Feel No Pain: The zombies gradually lose the ability to feel pain, and one sign that Maggie is losing her humanity comes when after she breaks her finger, she feels nothing.
- Fingore: Maggie breaks her finger after falling off a swing, which reveals that she's quickly turning into a zombie as she feels no pain. She later cuts it off in a state of panic.
- Flyover Country: The story takes place somewhere around Kansas City, with farms and corn fields in every direction.
- The Gimmick: It could be yet another "child dying out of cancer" drama with ease... so it has zombie infection instead.
- Heroic Suicide: Maggie kills herself in part to prevent the possibility she would unwillingly infect her father or anyone else if she attacked them after becoming a zombie.
- Horror Hunger:
- During the late stages of zombification, infected begin to smell food when around humans.
- Trent remarks that the woman who bit him suddenly just jumped at him and then was regretful about her instinctive behavior when she snapped out of it.
- Maggie ends up eating a captured fox in a burst of her hunger, with zero control over herself during the act.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The necroambulist virus turns its victims into cannibals.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Bonnie mentions the doctor's report on her daughter Julia never mentioned the little girl's name, instead calling her "patient".
- Jump Scare: The gas station attendant turned, but apparently managed to still lock himself inside the toilet before that happened. Wade walks right into him.
- Mercy Kill: With no known cure and the general state of the patients (it's implied they eventually die anyway) during the late stages of the infection, euthanasia is a CDC-approved solution. Both Vern and the sheriff recommend Wade do this to Maggie before she fully turns. He can't bring himself to do it.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers did their very best to pretend it's a much more action and horror focused than a quite drama about letting go to a terminally ill child.
- Our Zombies Are Different: For starters, they are of the Technically-Living Zombie variety. The incubation period of the virus takes a few weeks, making it relatively easy to contain in case of a Zombie Infectee. And said virus is not picky about the species, as it's also affecting plant life.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The film opens with Wade having searched for his daughter for the past two weeks after she ran away due to becoming a Zombie Infectee. The rest of the story is him grappling with the concept of outliving his child.
- Papa Wolf: Wade makes it extremely clear he's going to kill anyone trying to take his daughter to quarantine, and he would probably strangle the deputy if Maggie didn't stop him.
- Plague Zombie: The "necroambulist virus" — it's never specified what the source is, but it is portrayed as a communicable virus. The process is more gradual than most depictions, though: it's stated it takes six to eight weeks for the infected to become cannibalistic.
- Prophet Eyes: One of the early symptoms. Despite getting pale and almost white, the infected retain their eye-sight. And artificial tear drops seem to help.
- Put on a Bus: Early in the movie, Wade's younger children, Bobby and Molly, are sent to stay with their aunt until Maggie dies.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Sheriff Ray Pierce is firm in taking zombies to quarantine once it's necessary, but is willing to let them stay with their families for as long as possible. He also apologizes to Wade after getting into a fight with him over taking Maggie when it turned out she is still resisting.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Downplayed and portrayed sympathetically. Maggie is allowed to leave quarantine and spend some of her remaining time with her family because the doctor monitoring her is a friend of the Vogel's family doctor.
- Shout-Out: Arnie plays in it, so of course someone has to say "I'll be back".
- Take a Third Option:
- Invoked by Vern. Maggie can be either put into the quarantine or euthanized at home using an injection leading to a really painful death (and something that's given to quarantined patients anyway) or shot dead by Wade. He strongly suggests the latter as the best solution.
- Facing the perspective of either being sent to quarantine or eventually endangering her father (who refuses to put her down), Maggie opts for suicide.
- Undead Child: Nathan and his little girl Julia turn out to have become zombies, and Wade has to put them down.
- The Virus: The Necroambulist virus, which turns people into cannibalistic zombies. It also badly damages plants and it's not made clear if contaminated food might be one of the vectors for human infection.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Since the infection takes weeks to fully develop and the patients remain conscious and cognitive for the most part, both the infected and their families are struggling with the inhuman treatment they are given by everyone else. Most characters, even those with infected in their families, no longer consider people in late stages of infection to be human.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Wade's son Bobby has a clear understanding of what's happening to the infected people and shares a heartfelt discussion about it with Maggie before being sent to his aunt's.
- A World Half Full: It's a post-apocalyptic setting with zombies in it and an ongoing problem on how to fully contain The Virus, along with implied depopulation, but things are going good enough to restart school curriculum and allowing teens to hang out for a bonfire without it being Too Dumb to Live.
- Zombie Infectee: Maggie gets bitten during a Zombie Apocalypse and her parents try to protect her from everyone who wants to kill her... and then she starts thinking her parents smell delicious.
