[Panic Fest 2020 Review] Blood Quantum is a Good Movie that Could Have Been Great

Even before the movie begins, writer/director Jeff Barnaby makes a statement by calling his sophomore feature Blood Quantum. Referring to the laws enacted in the thirteen colonies that would eventually become America, blood quantum laws “defined” Native American identity based on percentages of ancestry. For example, in 1705, the Colony of Virginia version of the law limited civil rights of Native Americans and those who had one-half or more Native American ancestry. Blood Quantum flips the narrative by making full-blooded Natives miraculously immune to a fast-acting virus that turns people into zombies.

Yes, it’s yet another zombie film. But this one has the distinction of focusing on voices seldom seen in genre films. And a perspective of a group of people who’ve dealt with horrific, apocalyptic events before.

Set in 1981 in the Red Crow Reservation in the Northern Quebec Mi’gmaq tribal lands, Blood Quantum wastes no time setting up its apocalyptic situation. Fisherman Gisigu (Stonehorse Lone Goeman) quickly discovers his latest catch of salmon doesn’t want to stay gutted. It, along with the rest of his catch, springs back to life, flopping on the ground in a surreally hilarious way. Meanwhile, sheriff Traylor (MIchael Greyeyes) keeps getting weird reports from his deadpan dispatcher Doris (Felicia Shulman). But he and his ex-wife Joss (Elle-Maija Tailfeathers) have a much more immediate problem to deal with when the call comes in that their teenaged son Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) is in jail for...defecating on cars. 

Complicating the family dynamics is Traylor’s other son (from a different marriage) who’s named Alan but goes by Lysol (Kowa Gordon). As half-brothers, he and Joseph have a contentious relationship that’s not helped by the reveal that Joseph’s white girlfriend Charlie (Olivia Scriven) is pregnant. Soon, a dead dog snarls back to life and dead humans gain that insatiable taste for flesh we’re familiar with. And before our protagonists can deal with their personal issues, they’re faced with the possibility that the world is ending.

Blood Quantum is a good movie desperately wanting to be great. The first act is a perfectly paced prologue that features a fascinating and thrilling look at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse. But then the narrative jumps forward six months and the Red Claw Reservation has become a manmade fortress of junk and metal, barricading itself from the outside world. It’s a new world order where only full-blooded Native Americans are immune to the zombie infection. And the survivors have decided to don Mad Max-inspired masks and armor. 

It’s an odd balancing act that Jeff Barnaby’s script doesn’t necessarily succeed at. Barnaby’s genre chops are out in full force and in fine form. Heads will be smashed, chainsaws revved and Grandpa Gisigu will swing his samurai sword with wild abandon. A scene involving a chainsaw rivals 2013’s Evil Dead in gleeful bloodletting. The environments, meanwhile, do a fantastic job in telling the story, as well. “If they’re red they are dead / If they are white they bite,” is spraypainted across the entrance to the reservation and a dismembered zombie hangs outside, impotently chomping at anyone that walks by. 

The horror and gore is gleeful and over-the-top in the best way but sometimes feels at odds with a narrative that wants to offer up a searing social critique. At its core, Blood Quantum offers up a perspective that brings a much needed voice to the horror genre. It’s in the name and the themes that flirt around in the background. It just doesn’t completely nail its execution as the story goes a more biblical route, turning into a Cain and Abel story between half-brothers Lysol and Joseph. All of the thematic subtext built up in the tremendously paced first act eventually transitions into the same zombie apocalypticism we’re conditioned to expect, over and over. 

Blood Quantum is a well-made film with some amazing gore gags and special effects. Our theatre had a blast with it and I definitely recommend it. It’s just a shame it doesn’t quite hit the mark with the thematic critique it so desperately wanted.