Film Review: Blood Quantum

Blood Quantum is one of those films that more or less gets the job done, but there are aspects about it where you can’t help but feel that if the filmmakers expanded upon them just a little bit more, then you would have something truly great. At its best, it shows a lot of promise, while at its worst, it features many missed opportunities. The film is the second feature from Canadian writer/director, Jeff Barnaby, following his 2013 debut Rhymes for Young Ghouls, and in his latest film, he utilizes his indigenous roots as a way to explore the well torn territory of the zombie genre.

It follows a set of characters in Red Crow, a fictional Mi’gmaq reserve in the year 1981. We start off with an ominous and escalating series of events that begin with gutted fish flopping about as if they’re fresh out of the water, and ending with flesh hungry zombies attacking people. The people we meet during this are Sheriff Traylor (Michael Greyeyes), his ex-wife Joss (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers), his sons Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) and Lysol (Kiowa Gordon), Joseph’s pregnant – and white – girlfriend Charlie (Olive Scriven), and Traylor’s father Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman), as they try to survive and make sense of what is going on.

After the opening, the film jumps ahead six months. The indigenous characters realize they are immune to the zombie virus, and have fortified a heavily protected compound on their reservation. In their reservation, they have a place where they keep non-Indigenous refugees who are seeking shelter from the chaos and mayhem that is happening in the rest of the world. However, some members of the community, particularly with Lysol, do not believe in helping people coming to seek refuge while others are more willing to do what they think is right and assisting those who are in need.

What’s made the zombie genre so lasting in its impact and influence is the way storytellers can use those blueprints as ways to explore deeper ideas and themes about whatever suits the storyteller’s interest. With Barnaby, he is very much tying the zombie tropes we’re all aware of into a lesser explore perspective that touches on themes of colonialism, indigenous trauma, and anxieties surrounding cultural erasure. That culture informs the story in a compelling way, and it builds on the kind of story that George Romero made popular.

Unfortunately, that is also where we get into some the misgivings I had about the film. While there are plenty of great ideas here, the execution of those ideas left a lot to be desired. The opening segment is fantastic, but once we move ahead six months, it drops us into a setup that doesn’t really get a whole lot of breathing room before the drama gets in the way. The disagreements between the characters regarding how to treat outsiders is interesting, but dealt with in a very broad way. You don’t get a strong sense of who these people are and why they feel the way they feel, so many of them just end up as frustratingly basic post-apocalyptic archetypes.

To get at just how half-baked some of its themes are, you don’t need to look further than the title itself. The phrase “blood quantum” has its origins in the early colonial era, where it defines who is or is not a Native, through their ancestry, mostly as a way to control them and limit their civil rights. That doesn’t really come into play in the film at all. The closest it ever gets to exploring it is one throwaway line about whether or not Joseph and Charlie’s baby would be immune or not, and even that isn’t used to build any tension or thematic intrigue.

So, what we’re ultimately left with in Blood Quantum is a relatively bare bones zombie flick with undercooked drama that doesn’t totally do justice to its rich ideas. While that might seem like a deal breaker, it’s thankfully not a total waste, for Jeff Barnaby still shows great skill as a filmmaker in places where his script falls short. The film, which likely didn’t have that big of a budget, is very well made. Barnaby’s abilities to compose effective imagery, sustain a eerie mood, getting strong performances from his cast, and craft some cool and delightfully gruesome zombie action is more than enough to keep things engaging. While the film is certainly flawed, it’s still worth a watch, and it contains enough excitement and action to satisfy fans of the genre. At the very least, I hope it gains enough attention as a way to show the powers that be that seeing these kinds of genre films through a typically underrepresented lens is something worth investing in.