Maggie is a post-apocalyptic film set in a recognizable albeit devastated world. Humans have survived; the “zombies”—that is, people suffering from the “necroambulist virus”—are mostly under control. Centering on a single family, the film opens with Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger) bringing his daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) back to their farm in the Midwest after she left for a reason we don’t learn. While she was in the city she was bitten, and the film is about her slow death on the dying family farm. The elegiac tone of Maggie suffuses everything—the slowness of the film’s movement, its music, the sepia tone, the thunder that rumbles continuously in the background, the storm that threatens. Death always looms, but in this film it’s gotten significantly closer, more imminent. It’s palpable.
