Blood Quantum Parent Guide

In the isolated Mi’kmaq community of Red Crow in the early 1980s, Police Chief Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) seems to be having just another bad day. His father is babbling about gutted fish coming back to life, his sons have been arrested in town, and he just had to put down his ex-wife’s dog. But when he finds that his father has been right about the fish, and worse, that the dog has come back as well, he realizes the community has a serious problem. Although the Mi’kmaq people seem to be immune to the outbreak, the surrounding residents are not, and soon Red Crow is overrun by zombies and refugees.

Here’s a comment you don’t often see in film criticism: I wish this movie were more political. There is a strong political current throughout, but I wish the filmmakers had spent more of the runtime directly addressing it. Director Jeff Barnaby has described the film as a commentary on colonialism, and while there are certainly moments that focus on that, there are others that slip back into zombie comedy. I think the film would have been stronger if it had spent less time with the gore and more with the political dimensions of Indigenous groups in Quebec in the 1980s. There is one shot that directly mimics the famous “Face to Face” photo from the Oka Crisis, and it stands out to me as one of the strongest moments of the film.

That gripe aside, the zombie elements of the film are really well done. Gruesome, gory, and gritty are attributes the genre is built on, and Blood Quantum has them in spades. With a combination of good comic timing and over-the-top gore, the movie manages to be funny without getting silly.

Obviously, this is not a family film. The zombie genre dines out on, so to speak, bloody violence and Blood Quantum is no exception. People are decapitated, shot, sliced up with chainsaws, set on fire, fed into a woodchipper, and bludgeoned to death. There are horrific scenes where a zombie eats a baby and where a zombie eats a man’s genitals. If you are even the littlest bit squeamish, avoid this film like the plague. Graphic violence aside, there is a ceaseless torrent of profanity, which by my count reached 85 sexual expletives over the 96 minute runtime. Frequent detailed sexual references and discussions and abuse of drugs and alcohol throughout push this even further from “appropriate family viewing” territory.

If you’re a fan of the genre, you might want to give this a look, but otherwise, there are stronger options. Oscillating between darkly funny and horrifyingly depressing, Blood Quantum is a difficult film to recommend to most people. It is well made, creative, and grotesque - and depending on your preference, either a classic of the genre or an unjustifiable gore fest. Much like human flesh, zombie movies are just a matter of personal taste.