Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Blood Quantum is certainly a zombie film. And that might be about as much as you need to hear about it to add or exclude from your watch list. I suppose that we’re due you a little more information, though.
On a First Nations reserve, the local sheriff of the Red Crow Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) stoically does the rounds, even managing not to seem too perturbed when the gutted fish his father caught spring back to life and start flopping around. To be fair, he’s distracted by a call to pick up his sons, Forrest Goodluck’s Joseph, and local bad influence Kiowa Gordon’s Lysol from a nearby town. There, the all too familiar, to an audience at least, start of a zombie outbreak happens.
Smash cut to six months later, where a strange twist of fate has made the Red Crows immune to zombification. Take that, smallpox. Their reservation, which is on an island, provides a defensible base for them to hold, which scavenging for resources to help themselves and any non-shambling refugees from the mainland. This, however, rankle Lysol, who’d rather not add any more mouths to feed, and his resolve to do something about it, and the chaos that unleashes, provides the main narrative reason for continued ripping apart and chewing of people, which is not something that their antibodies can do much about.
It’s not all zombie action – in fact like most of the better horror films the central planks of it are barely about zombies at all – with the bulk of the emotional work of the film coming from Traylor and his ex-wife (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) Joss wondering if they’ve been suitable parents to their kids, just as Joseph struggles with his impending fatherhood in a suddenly very different world.
That said, it’s not doing anything that you’ve not seen before, and some of the actions Lysol takes seem mainly in the interest of making a plot happen, rather than anything believably driven from his character. But, well, find me a horror film where character motivations aren’t a problem and I will award you a special prize.
Blood Quantum does win a few representation points for its setting and its stars, although I’m not convinced it’s doing much with that – while clearly the title and the inverse viral resistance thing points to First Nations and Native American history, it’s window dressing, the same way that “being shot in a mall” is window dressing in Dawn of the Dead, not a treatise on consumerism.
Really, it’s main problem is external – I imagine there’s many people like us who have sat through quite enough zombie movies and television series over the past, what, twenty years, and aren’t quite ready for a resurgence in them yet.
But, between some commendable, if perhaps a touch too restrained performances, some pleasingly gross effects work, and a sword-wielding ass-kicking Grandpa, if you’re in the market for a zombie film this is a pretty good option.