plug: Blood Quantum (2020)

“This old, tired, angry animal turned these stupid fuckin’ white men into something she can use again. Fertilizer.”

Blood Quantum is a new zombie movie and the second feature from Jeff Barnaby, a Mi’kmaq film director who grew up in the Listuguj indigenous reserve in Quebec, Canada. The film takes place in a Mi’kmaq reserve called Red Crow, located in an area where a virus is turning people into zombies, except for the Indigenous people of the reserve who find themselves immune. As the zombie infestation turns into an apocalypse, the people of Red Crow are faced with the impossible task of deciding whether to let outsiders into their fortified community and risk the annihilation of, well, everyone.

I’m no zombie-movie expert, but I have seen and thoroughly enjoyed enough of them to know this is a real good one that checks all the genre’s essential boxes while providing an urgent commentary on colonialism and the existential conundrum it imposes upon Native communities. It’s thoughtfully written, beautifully paced, and gorgeously shot — epic yet intimate in scope with a phenomenal cast of actors I really hope to see more of in the near future.

Blood Quantum is one of several zombie movies I’ve watched in quarantine. Like I said before, zombies aren’t typically my thing (I’m more of a slasher guy) but it’s been cathartic to watch movies about pandemic-induced collapses of civilization that put all the colonial and material evils of our power structures out on the table. I’ll leave you with a quote from a recent interview Barnaby did with Vulture where he eloquently sums this all up and explains what it has to do with his movie.

“What’s interesting about this virus is … it’s the way Native people have always lived. It’s nothing new for a Native community to face record unemployment while at the same time dealing with large amounts of diseases. My wife is Navajo and there’s rampant cancer on the reserve just by virtue of being so close to the uranium mines there. So there’s stuff like that baked into the script. The general public is just coming to terms with it now. I think one of the things that nobody really talks about with apocalypse films is the almost ecstasy of seeing the powers that be fall […] Everybody wants to see this system fall, because people are beginning to realize, Hey, they’re not just exploiting minorities and black people anymore. They’re coming after everybody. Now it’s an issue. Late-stage capitalism, that’s what they’re calling it, and it’s like, this is just capitalism, man! This is the stage that it’s always been at! You’re just new to the game.”