Let me begin by saying that I don't feel very qualified to write about this movie. It is a zombie movie (about which I am eminently qualified to write, having seen way too many), but it is also a movie about the indigenous perspective and colonialism (about which I am not qualified at all). I can tell you about how the movie is parallels Dawn of the Dead in a lot of ways (the George Romero movie is great, for the record, and the Zack Snyder movie decidedly not). But can I tell you about how this movie is a reflection of the Listuguj raids in 1981 Quebec? I'm afraid I cannot. And I suspect that my inability to do so results in a lot of missing context.
As a film, however, I can tell you it's pretty good. Watching this coming off the back of Ant-Man 3 where there is no such thing a real physical backdrop, I felt a palpable relief at the strong sense of place that this movie offers. I grew up in an area around a lot of coastal Native American reservations, and while those out east like this one are a bit different, they were also very familiar to me, and very grounding. It felt like something was actually happening in a real place, which doesn't feel that notable until you've just experienced the exact opposite.
There are several "main characters" in the movie but there is one who I think the movie is most "about," and rather than any of them, it is the villain (if there can be said to be one) of the movie. As before, I am not sure I grasp all the nuance of the situation, but Lysol is a very angry man. And a lot of his actions become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy driving the destruction of the film. He's at odds with the more traditional members of the community and he is constantly angry about how the white people have treated them, and how this is their moment for vengeance.
One of the movie's central points is the conflict that he represents - he is absolutely correct in that his people have been treated very badly, and when the tables flip so that suddenly they have the upper hand, they are simply doing what the other side would likely have done to them - but he is also completely wrong, in that he has poisoned himself, and doing the bad thing that the white communities were doing to them is still wrong, and his anger and choice to assume their mantle of power is a self-destructive act. The main characters of the movie (like Joseph and Traylor and Joss) represent the opposite side, wherein they recognize the damage that has been done to them, but still take upon themselves the moral high road of opening their doors to the people they can help and trying to improve their limited society despite the pain they've seen and observed. The real tension is which not who the zombies will eat, but who will win in that struggle.
My final evaluation of the movie is that it's somewhat limited by the zombie genre; it has certain conventions it has to adhere to, and some of them are not that interesting anymore, and it is pretty predictable where it will all lead as a result. And if you are unwilling to think about the implications of the colonialism represented in the film it might be somewhat worse, and I think maybe it undercuts a bunch of that in the end by the zombie film's need to have everyone die, but even as just a random genre fiction act of horror and violence it actually is reasonably decent.
Score: 7/10
IMDb: Blood Quantum
PS: Free Palestine
PPS: It is also probably an intentional point by the writer/director that with the power inversion (in which the high Blood Quantum becomes good instead of bad through literal immunity), the indigenous people survive more easily and put more of a life together due to having been forced to live so long already with very little and with the permanent existential outside threat looming over them; only the nature of that threat has changed.
PPPS: The old man with the katana, Stonehorse Lone Goeman, is actually an MMA and Muay Thai expert, and certainly provides a lot of style and flair to his role. I hope that his choice of weapon was a shoutout to a personal Japanese heritage as his last name implies, but I actually have no idea. He is cool, though.
PPPPS: On a tragic note, I'm very sad to have learned that the director of this movie died of cancer at just 46 years old. RIP Jeff Barnaby.
