Abigail Breslin is no stranger to zombie movies, having been in the hit Zombieland several years ago, but the 19-year old actress is approaching the genre from a very different viewpoint in the new film Maggie . Debuting Friday in theaters and VOD, the film stars Breslin as the title character, a teenage girl who has been bitten and is slowly making an inevitable transformation. But in the world of Maggie, a zombie bite takes many weeks to fully transform you and so Maggie returns home to her family farm with her father, Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger) where the father and daughter try to process that she has very little time left before she will lose control and transform mentally and physically into something unrecognizable.

Maggie Review

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I spoke to Breslin about the film’s quiet, emotional approach to a zombie story, what it was like working with someone as iconic as Schwarzenegger (in such an uncharacteristic role) and more about the process of making Maggie.I just liked that it was totally different. It got described to be as a zombie movie and I thought “Okay, that’ll be interesting” because I did Zombieland when I was younger. But when I read it I didn’t really feel like it was a zombie movie. It felt more like a human movie that deals with zombie people. For me, it’s more like a virus movie and the slow progression and disintegration that somebody goes through when they’re sick and that kind of looming, inevitable expiration and how hard that is for families and friends to deal with. For me it’s more complex than just, “She’s a zombie, she’s going to kill people” so that’s what I was drawn to really.He wanted it really real and really something that people could relate to even if they weren't horror movie fans or zombie fans. So that was something that I really liked. It was just a different way to tell a story about human interaction and their relationships. We had a lot of conversations about how the transition would go into her being a full-blown zombie. We talked a lot about it and really figured out the stages and how each one was really unique and also how you would slip into that animalistic behavior in certain spots, without going too overboard with it. We had a lot of conversations about it and a lot of figuring it out as we went along. I think he did an amazing job and he’s awesome.Yeah, it was really hard because you don’t want it to ever be like “Alright, now she’s a zombie!” We want it to feel real. That’s what I thought was even scarier than most horror movies was that it is something that could really realistically happen some day. Maybe not to that extent but viruses come up all the time and they have bizarre effects on people. I wanted to make my performance more just like she doesn’t have control of what’s going on with her. She’s kind of losing her mind and losing control of her instincts. It was hard. I don’t want to go overboard with this but we had to try out a bunch of different ways and come to a happy medium, I guess.

Continue to Page 2 as Breslin talks about what it was like working with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the scariest scene in Maggie for her to shoot and more.