Movie Review: Blood Quantum

Blood Quantum *** / *****

Directed by: Jeff Barnaby.

Written by: Jeff Barnaby.

Starring: Michael Greyeyes (Traylor), Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Joss), Forrest Goodluck (Joseph), Kiowa Gordon (Lysol), Olivia Scriven (Charlie), Stonehorse Lone Goeman (Gisigu), Brandon Oakes (Bumper), William Belleau (Shooker), Devery Jacobs (James), Gary Farmer (Moon), Felicia Shulman (Doris), Natalie Liconti (Lilith).

 

Jeff Barnaby’s debut film – Rhymes for Young Ghouls – announced a major new voice in Indigenous filmmaking in Canada – and a refreshing. That film wasn’t afraid to take on important, weighty subject matter – it’s plot dealt directly with Residential schools – but also wrapped in up in genre trapping, making it an entertaining film instead of a lecture of straight history lesson. He attempts something similar with his long awaited for follow-up – Blood Quantum – putting an Indigenous spin on the zombie film. He doesn’t play with the genre as much as he did with his debut – but he has crafted another fascinating hybrid of a film.

 

Once again, we are on the Red Creek reserve – this time in the present day. Things are already tense for the reserve Sheriff, Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) – who has a teenage son with a pregnant, white girlfriend, a few troublemakers, an ex-wife he still has feelings for, and an aging father – who complicates things even more when he won’t stop calling about the fish he just gutted, coming back to life. Barnaby takes a little bit of time setting up his own personal zombie apocalypse film – before flashing forward six months to see how far society has fallen in that time. The twist here is that if you have Indigenous blood, you are immune from the zombies – at least as far as their bites won’t turn you into one. If a horde rips your guts out though, that’s another matter.

 

The film does get bloody and violent – and the body count ratchets up more and more as the film moves along, and the kills, while not being particularly inventive for the genre, do get very bloody – and Barnaby isn’t afraid to sit there for a while as the zombies rip you apart. You are stuck watching as it happens. On the scale of a typical zombie movie, I’d say that Barnaby does a good – but not great – job. He is basically copying Romero – and everyone who has copied Romero – and while he does it very well, it’s also not overly original.

 

Where the film is original though is in its outlook. Like Romero again, Barnaby is using the zombie genre to smuggle in weighty, important themes. There are very real debates going on within the Red Creek community about survival – and what they should be doing. They are immune for the bites, but they are letting in white people as well – and protecting them, many at the insistence of Charlie, the pregnant girlfriend. But by letting them in, they are putting their own community in danger. Not letting them in basically dooms them to certain death. The film is about colonialism as much as it about anything, this time imagining a world where, for the first time in generations, the Indigenous people will actually have a say – even control – over what direction their society, and society and general, will move towards.

 

As a filmmaker, I still think Barnaby has a way to go – a way to improve. His films are heady genre films, with weighty themes, important subject matter, but also want to operate as pure genre films as well. It’s a difficult mix to pull off – and Barnaby is still trying to bring both parts together into one great film. I think he’ll get there – but it’s not quite yet.