Canada has always had a thing for zombies. George A. Romero, godfather of the dead, spent his last years in this, his adopted country. CanCon icon Sarah Polley starred in the Dawn of the Dead remake. And local filmmakers have put their unique stamp on the genre, including the excellent French-language Les Affamés (Ravenous) from 2017, and Bruce McDonald’s 2008 horror, the hilariously bilingual Pontypool.
Add to that list writer/director Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum, which imagines the nation in the grip of a pandemic that turns its victims into flesh-eating zombies, dubbed “zeds” by those who know how that letter is supposedly to be pronounced. But there’s a twist. First Nations residents on the Red Crow Mi’gmaq reserve are immune to the disease.
It’s a clever reversal from the filmmaker, who was born in Listuguj, the Quebec reserve that doubles as Red Crow in the film. The First Nations of North America suffered a heavy burden from the diseases of early European settlers. Why wouldn’t the land exact retribution? Though as one character asks darkly: “Who says we’re immune? Maybe the Earth just forgot about us.”
Whatever the reason, things get off to a jumpy start when an old man is gutting his fishing catch and is startled to find them still flailing around. But from undead salmon – which really can’t do much except freak people out at dinner – the horror ratchets up quickly.
Who says we’re immune? Maybe the Earth just forgot about us.
Overworked local police chief Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) gets a call from a man whose non-Indigenous wife turned on him in the midst of giving birth. This doesn’t bode well for his son Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) and the young man’s pregnant white girlfriend Charlie, played by Olivia Scriven.
Barnaby is a filmmaker who excels at injecting politics into his films without making them any less entertaining. Just look at his last feature, 2013’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls, a revenge fantasy thriller that asks some uncomfortable questions about the legacy of the residential school system in Canada.
Blood Quantum is full of dark and clever references, some more obvious than others. The action takes place in 1981, the same year that Listuguj was raided by Quebec police over issues of salmon fishing rights. And when an uninfected white refugee is let into the reservation he is told not to leave his blanket outside, lest it carry the zed contagion; the parallel to smallpox is clear.
An unintentional real-life analogy comes when the Red Crow residents construct a barricade on the bridge between the reservation and the nearby community to keep out the infected “townies.” These days, First Nations have erected barricades not as a form of political protest but to try to keep COVID-19 outside their borders.
But you don’t need to watch this movie as some sort of settler thesis. Blood Quantum is a thrilling, bloody zombie story with nods to Romero’s genre-defining work, and to Quentin Tarantino, not to mention some beautiful, brief forays into graphic-novel territory. And the family dynamics among Traylor, ex-wife Joss (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) and their other son Lysol (Kiowa Gordon) means there’s more for viewers to hold onto than just wondering who will be the next victim.
But let’s be fair; that’s always fun too. And it’s fascinating to watch the residents of Red Crow grappling with their situation, figuring out how to survive. In one scene they discuss the pros and cons of living off the land. Moose and deer are deemed OK to eat, but the elders warn people to stay away from the fish. No one wants to eat a meal that bites back.
Blood Quantum is available to rent or own across all on-demand and digital platforms on April 28.
4 stars out of 5
