The dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi’gMaq reserve of Red Crow, except for its Indigenous inhabitants who are strangely immune to the zombie plague.
“Blood Quantum” has a lot of things on its mind. It’s a zombie movie set within a reservation of the Mi’gMaq tribe in Canada. Its opening sets up the cast of characters and their fatal flaws as well as hints at the dark world they will soon inhabit. It makes use of violent imagery often to brutal effect and does not hold back. The sophomore outing for director Jeff Barnaby examines differing beliefs within the tribe as to their relationship with the outside world. “Blood Quantum” parades as an excellent zombie horror movie but it delivers on much more tribe-related ideas creating a new spin on a well-worn genre and injecting it with both brutality and philosophy.
Michael Greyeyes plays Traylor, a reservation sheriff who helps run the surviving groups. In the wake of a zombie apocalypse, the Mi’gMaq people realize they are immune to the virus. Traylor must protect the people as more and more survivors flock to their home, a supposed “haven.” Traylor’s two sons (by different mothers) Lysol, played by Kiowa Gordon, and Joseph, played by Forrest Goodluck, feud during the apocalypse over whether people from the local town outside the reservation should gain refuge from the tribe. Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ Joss tries desperately to keep everyone from clawing at each other’s throats as the doctor (and mother to both sons), but this feud grows to consume everyone when Lysol starts murdering refugees.
From the very onset of this movie, we’re promised a bloody time and an atmospheric one. Its darker, grayer color palette suggests a tense universe full of disappointment and caution. There are plenty of great scenes of death and dismemberment. Gary Farmer’s Moon takes up a samurai sword and slashes zombies in half, their entrails hanging down. At one point a chainsaw rips right into a zombie’s brain, spitting blood all over Traylor. These scenes help bifurcate the simple, even comedic, notion of killing zombies from the shocking and horrifying death of humans. While the film invents fun and creative gags for zombie murders (samurai sword, chainsaw, shotgun, a wheat shredder at one point…), it saves its true emotional beats for the living.
Grayeyes leads the cast with a robust performance and a wonderful script. He runs the gamut of disappointed, proud, embarrassed, and more throughout the film. The entire tribe toughens up to accommodate the needs of this new Zombie-filled world and you feel each character’s emotional sacrifice to become the hardened warriors needed of them. While Goodluck and Gordon struggle to move into nuanced territory, it’s fair to say you don’t get a zombie script and expect to deliver on some strong emotional beats.
Ultimately, this movie hangs its beating heart on Goodluck’s character. His battle with his brother Lysol, first of ideas then with weapons, drives the conflict at the end and spells disaster for everyone involved. The question of why the Mi’gMaq people are immune ties into the title “Blood Quantum,” referring to a certain colonial blood measurement system used to determine indigenous status. Once formerly a tool to erase the ethnic identity of tribes, including the Mi’gMaq, it now represents their ability to survive their oppressors and prompts the question: should they provide refuge for the ancestors of their oppressors? This dialogue finds two opposite sides with Lysol and Joseph and in this manner, the movie comes to its climactic finale: not a gunshot but a baby’s birth.
“Blood Quantum” has a lot on its mind and it wants you to pay attention. Cleverly set in a zombie apocalypse world, this movie delivers an examination of warring tribal mentalities regarding the treatment of oppressors. For a short period, it’s a window into the reservation. That the director, Jeff Barnaby, is himself Mi’gMaq, shows an authenticity to this film requiring a second or even third viewing. That Shudder has his film means so much as it earns its grade on horror and violence but it gives the audience so much more. I recommend this movie to all violent-horror movie fans but people interested in seeing a perspective of things they wouldn’t normally.
Now available to stream on Shudder
