Arnold Schwarzenegger's Zombie Movie With Major Last Of Us Vibes Is Streaming On HBO Max

"The Last of Us" has been a big hit for HBO, earning stellar reviews and pleasing fans of the similarly popular video games it's based on. Season 2 of "The Last of Us" was mostly an improvement on the previous season, proving HBO has a reliable winner on its hands. If you're a fan of this kind of post-apocalyptic drama and can't wait for the already-confirmed "The Last of Us" season 3, then Arnold Schwarzenegger's zombie movie, "Maggie," might just have what you need to make it through. Luckily, like "The Last of Us," it's available to stream on HBO Max right now.

Arnie was once the biggest movie star in the world, but by the end of the '90s, he was struggling to maintain his A-lister status. Schwarzenegger wanted Roger Spottiswoode's 2000 film "The 6th Day" to reinvent his reputation, but while the sci-fi movie was far from a disaster, it received only lukewarm reviews and was hardly a box office triumph. In the years that followed, the Austrian Oak entered politics, becoming Governor of California before returning to acting and making some of the most interesting films of his career.

That's not to say all of those films were good. Many of them were awful. But some of them did what "The 6th Day" couldn't: reinvent Schwarzenegger. "Maggie" is one example. The film sees the actor take on a more dramatic role as a small-town farmer whose daughter becomes infected with a virus that turns victims into zombies. Already, then, the premise has major "The Last of Us" vibes, which are only enhanced by the fact that the director actually contributed to a small piece of the video game itself.

Some of Arnold Schwarzenegger's worst films came out in the 2000s and 2010s, but "Maggie" isn't one of them. The film represents the directorial debut of Henry Hobson, who previously designed title sequences for major film, TV, and video game projects, including Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" and the original "The Last of Us" video game.

With "Maggie," he made the transition to feature directing, and it wasn't all that far removed from "The Last of Us" in terms of its patriarchal-figure-protects-young-girl storyline. The film is set during a deadly epidemic that has seen large swathes of the U.S. population transformed into zombies. Schwarzenegger plays Wade Vogel, a farmer whose daughter, Maggie Vogel (Abigail Breslin), becomes infected with the virus. Unlike so many zombie films, the rest of the story is fairly intimate, focusing on Wade's attempts to prevent Maggie from being taken into quarantine, pushing himself to the limit as his daughter's condition worsens and she slowly slips away.

Though "Maggie" has a strong horror element, it's also much more thoughtful than your typical zombie movie. That attempt to go against established norms is also reflected in Arnie's casting in the lead. During a Fangoria interview, Hobson spoke about casting the actor against type. "When Arnold came up, it was a really intriguing idea," he said. "He's been the hero in everything he's done, and to now use that against him and have him be a father who has failed to protect his family was a really intriguing idea." Intriguing, yes. But it didn't necessarily translate to unanimous critical praise.

"Maggie" premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival before receiving a limited theatrical and video-on-demand release in May of that year. When it did finally arrive in theaters, many critics seemed to enjoy it. The film has a not-terrible 61% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Jonathan Romney of The Guardian writing, "Arnie shows a delicacy you'd never have suspected." Joe McGovern of Entertainment Weekly was similarly impressed with Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance. "The sight of Schwarzenegger in this small, subdued role makes us root for his survival," he wrote. "That's the power of star wattage at work. Not even the undead can kill it."

Still, plenty of reviewers didn't care for the movie's slow pace and dour tone. /Film's own take was that Schwarzenegger's dramatic chops went to waste in "Maggie," and several other critics found the film to be too melodramatic and melancholy to really work. The pacing certainly isn't what you might expect from a post-apocalyptic horror film. "Maggie" moves slowly, and whether that works for you will depend on what you're expecting and your general tolerance for slow-burn films. But there's no doubt that Wade was one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's best roles, reminding us that he was always more than the macho action hero archetype with which he made his name.

So, if you're looking for something along the lines of "The Last of Us" that's a little more dramatic than your typical zombie horror, then "Maggie" is a great option. The film is streaming on HBO Max right now at no extra cost to subscribers.