Maggie

Arnold fans probably won’t be very happy with this atypical role for him in an atypical film, but I think he managed it well. On an emotional level it works mainly because nobody speaks too much (which is good, especially for Arnold), everyone goes around broody and sad, suffering in silence. The plot is basically non-existent, it’s just a moody 80-minute farewell to a daughter. Anyone willing to get in the mood, will enjoy it. 7/10 (09.05.2015)

Essentially, this movie is depression multiplied by the derivative of the logarithm to zero. That is pure depression at the point of no return. This impression is created by the story, post-apocalyptic locations and the music in itself, which is properly gloomy. It is hard to rate a film like that. Anyway, I am glad that Arnold Schwarzenegger delved into something like this. It is completely different from his usual kind of movies and he managed to do it with grace. Alongside Abigail Breslin, who literally changed in front of everyone’s eyes. I am not going to watch this again but I have to say it was really strange 95 minutes. And as far as composers go, David Wingo is a name I’m beginning to be curious about. (21.05.2015)

Terrence Malick's style farewell to his daughter. The concept is quite nice, but the way it is eventually put into practice is rather a letdown. The melancholic atmosphere works quite well, but in terms of acting it is not typical. What is telling is that pensive Arnie whose acting seems to be desperate and inappropriate is the better part of the central duo. (03.08.2015)

Art zombie horror? Daddy Vogel brings his infected daughter home and spends the last two weeks of her life with her. Maggie is no blockbuster and it’s quality is on a level with some of the worse episodes of the Walking Dead series, but Hobson does good work with the atmosphere of utter despair and depression a little like what you feel on a Sunday afternoon. There is a basic lack of story and nothing interesting happens until the second half when her transformation becomes slightly apparent. But the main surprise is Arnold who, in his role as a pensive farmer displays, his greatest acting attributes - a grim expression and sparse lines - in this mode he is fantastic and I hope he uses it in some more viewer-friendly movie. But I am pleased with him, you have to experiment. Are we still people? (10.05.2015)

Ich war gespannt, wie dieser Film aussehen wird. Dass ich von ihm aber so begeistert sein werde, das hätte ich nicht gedacht. Die sehr originelle Auffassung des Zombie-Genres ist eine willkommene Erfrischung, Arnold sowie Abigail Breslin spielen ausgezeichnet, die düstere Stimmung ist greifbar und alles wirkt maximal authentisch. Ich bin mir sicher, dass ich eine Reihe von Szenen aus Maggie nicht vergesse und dass ich mir den Film bald wieder ansehen werde. (16.09.2018)

A commendable attempt to make the world's most depressing film uses every mainstream cinematic device invented to induce despondency, namely gray filters, handheld camera, close-ups on faces, decimated landscapes, the American Midwest, dim artificial lights, and Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to act. As for the latter, he deserves a puppet for effort, but any acting credit is more a factor of his age than his actual training (plus, how is it possible not to unlearn that infernal Austrian accent in 50 years of living in the US). It's just that Maggie isn't just an instant purchase of trendy depression set in a profitable zombie apocalyptic universe. On the contrary, through its hopelessness and gratuitousness, it brings back to the perpetually scarred zombie genre a real tragedy and sensibility that has slowly disappeared from it due to the glut of movies, comics, and TV shows, and which previous creators have tried to induce with ever increasing panic by featuring younger and more innocent characters. In Maggie, the children are removed from the vicinity of the irreversibly infected protagonist (who is the physically atypical for a US film Abigail Breslin) right at the beginning of the film. For the rest of the film, we don't learn much about the characters and yet we sympathize with them, proving the universality of the sense of loss and the irreplaceability of the individual, the exact opposite of what the endless zombie shows or other franchises have taught us so far. (02.11.2015)

Arnold Schwarzenegger is definitely not a weak link in this movie, where he surprisingly plays a believable role. Moreover, he tried to suppress his accent a little bit, which turned out quite well. This film definitely deserves more attention than it has received, or rather more positive reviews, because although the genre doesn't change, it certainly manages to come up with something that is not traditional and that works. (12.02.2016)