THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

MOVIES

THE ZOMBIES-AND-INDIANS THRILLER BLOOD QUANTUM, PLUS WESTERNS AND WEST-SET FILMS TO MAKE THE DAWN OF A DECADE ANYTHING BUT HORRIFYING.

WE SUPPOSE THEY COULD HAVE called it Zombies and Indians — but that might have made the movie sound more high camp romp than hardcore thriller. And trust us: Early reviews already have warned us there’s far more scary stuff than funny business in Blood Quantum, the Canadian-produced contemporary drama that had its world premiere last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be available for viewing in early 2020 on the Shudder streaming channel.

Written and directed by Jeff Barnaby, the movie brings a canny metaphoric twist to your garden-variety zombie apocalypse scenario. In Northern Quebec, members of an isolated Mi’gmaq community known as Red Crow discover they are the only humans immune to a zombie plague. As desperate folks from surrounding areas flee to Red Crow to escape hordes of undead predators, the Mi’gmaq must decide whether to let the outsiders in — and thereby risk not only the extinction of their tribe but the end of humanity as we know it.

Canadian Plains Cree actor Michael Greyeyes — who previously dealt with marauding zombies as Qaletaqa Walker on TV’s Fear the Walking Dead — heads the Blood Quantum cast as Traylor, the Red Crow sheriff who strives to stand his ground against threats posed by both the living and the undead. During a 2018 C&I interview to promote Woman Walks Ahead, the historical drama in which he portrayed Lakota chief Sitting Bull, Greyeyes aptly described this new film as “a very astute political commentary, really, on colonialism and the rapacious nature of colonialism. It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s exciting — and it also is quite politically astute.”

While you wait to see Blood Quantum, here are a few other recent films now available on DVD/Blu-ray and streaming platforms.

. Acclaimed by critics and audiences since its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival,