One may think that there are more than enough zombie movies out there, that the genre is flooded with terrible films with budgets high and low. I would tend to agree about 97% of the time, but occasionally, a surprise comes along and turns the zombie genre on its head. Blood Quantum, though not a total game-changer, is good enough to not go into the “meh” pile where thousands of other zombie films that weren’t made by George Romero end up.
“…full-scale zombie apocalypse, but only white people turn into zombies…the indigenous people on the Red Crow reservation are immune…“
The concept of Blood Quantum is generally the same as every other zombie movie. One day, some weird sh*t starts happening. In this film, it’s after Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman) goes fishing as he does on a typical day in 1981. He’s gutting the giant salmon, and after the third one, it starts to flop around on the table. Gisigu is a Native American Vietnam veteran who lives in the Mi’gMaq reserve of the Red Crow tribe. He’s an elder in his indigenous community, while his son, Traylor (Michael Greyeyes), is the police chief.
Traylor is dealing with his delinquent son, Alan (Kiowa Gordon), (or as he’s mostly known Lysol) and his mostly good teenage son, Joseph (Forrest Goodluck), who lands in jail with his older, more notorious brother. On the way to pick the two of them up, he meets with Joseph’s mother, Joss (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers). During all this, Traylor discovers that Joss’s dog had eaten some rat poison and decides to shoot the dog to put it out of its misery. Later, after encountering a very sick (as in “I’m about to start enjoying the taste of human flesh”) fellow prisoner at the jail where his sons are, Traylor meets up with his dad, opens the trunk of the car, and the dog has come back to life.
"…rife with social commentary."
