Okay I really should have watched this months ago when it premiered on Shudder and that streaming service is still the only place to view the new zombie film.

Hailing from Canada Blood Quantum is a zombie movie set in 1981 on a Canadian Native-American reservation. Produced, directed, written, and starring member of First Nation Tribes the film approaches the now tired zombie sub-genre from a thematic perspective of colonization and does a damn fine job of it.

The story centers on Traylor, his estranged wife Joss, their son Joseph and his pregnant white girl friend and Joseph’s half-brother and Traylor’s delinquent son ‘Lysol.’ The movie unfolds in two distinct periods, the first day, the day the Zombie plague erupted and six months later as winter approaching and the tribe is dealing with an influx of refugees to the safe harbor that they have created on the former reservation. The twist to the genre and source of the film’s title is the quirk that Native Americans are immune to the infection bites of the zombie and do not rise up as walking corpses. All of the is driven by the Native-American characters with their interpersonal dynamics and prejudices propelling the plot. Much like the little seen Maggie this is a family drama that unfolding during a zombie pandemic but albeit with much more Dawn of the Deadinspired blood and gore effects.

Blood Quantum is a shining example of how to use speculative fiction and its unreality to explore issue bedeviling our real world without pulling out a tired soapbox or losing track of the entertainment required to keep an audience engaged. If you have access to Shudder this is a movie well worth watching.