FILM REVIEW – The Girl With All The Gifts
It is tempting to roll one’s eyes at zombies being the key world builder to The Girl With All The Gifts.
Based on the acclaimed 2014 novel, the film comes at a time of zombie genre saturation. It is easy to consider the genre played out, given the recent arrivals of stuff like The Walking Dead, its spin-off Fear The Walking Dead, World War Z, any number of books, a couple of event-like TV shows, and all the rest.
The easy comparison is video game The Last of Us, whose anticipated film adaptation is currently stuck in limbo. Both stories relates around the aftermath of a virus spread by the cordyceps fungus, which is known to cause a zombie-like state in ants, and talk about multiple stages of infection. Both also revolve around a girl with some degree of immunity, and wakling through abandoned cityscapes.
Where this film succeeds is doing something interesting in a slightly subversive way, which is particularly strong in the opening stretch. Rather than embrace the cliche dystopia, apocalypse or bands of Mad Max-style lunatics, this film is built on classic horror-style atmosphere, a tenseness not seen in a while, ruminations of the fragility of humanity, and the ultimate fears.
The first revelation of how the zombies – or “hungries”, as the film refers to them – plays is not immediate. Indeed, we also get little sense of how it was that the world fell. Instead, we begin in a quasi-prison environment, where a few dozen kids are rounded up in Hannibal Lecter-style shackles.
What breaks the tension comes in their classroom, when base commander Sergeant Banks (Paddy Considine) provokes a student into snapping with little more than spit to eradicate his “blocker gel”. At this point comes the first of a drip-feed of comments that reveals that the kids are partially infected.
It is also gradually revealed that the kids are there for an experiment towards the distilling of a virus cure, under the command of Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close). One day, a bright kid called Melanie (Sennia Nanua) volunteers herself after being disgusted at who she is for snapping at her teacher Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton).
But during the operation, the rural army base where they’re all hiding out is overrun by hungries, in a visceral raid sequence. The part also demonstrates Melanie’s split personality, flipping between scared human child and aggressive monster.
Sequences like this turn up throughout, particularly after the action moves to abandoned London. There’s more than one sequence, for instance, documenting at once the scared girl on her own who gradually becomes more confident, but she is also chasing, killing and feeding on animals, or sacrificing them to lure away a cavalcade of waiting zombies. All of this is something interesting, rather than the fairly simple “bang bang” shoot the zombies affair.
The core of the film is on Nunia’s performance, who plays the titular girl. Her performance is the key to the film’s production, and is a remarkably emotionally complex performance. She is tasked to convey the character’s fear of her monster side, young inquisitiveness, and a zombie rage – often in the same scene. Its remarkably well done just how well she is able to juggle all this and work within the set parameters.
Some of her best inter-play comes with Close, who brings an analytical context to Melanie’s character backstory, and why she and the others from the classroom are key to beating the disease. These scenes are remarkably well-handled.
The core quartet of performers is strong throughout. Arterton does very nicely in an emotional role in the movie in nurturing someone she knows of as a monster, while Considine does nicely well in the role. For a low-budget film, it also shows excellent scope.
Not everything about the film is perfect. There is a fair and valid argument that while it does some interesting stuff with the tropes of the genre, the core adult characters follow generic motivations and plotlines.
More complex to review is the ending. While no spoilers will be disclosed, it follows up the spirit of the book’s ending. The ending has two different connotations. On the one hand, it does something different, but on the other, it feels like the motivations for it, and its final scene, aren’t fully explained and feel a bit confused.
For the most part, however, this is an excellent production. It has a good balance of zombie action, fear factor – even if one or two scenes push plausibility – and an excellently ambitious scope for a low-budget film. In short, its a good film that is a contender for one of the strongest zombie productions in this recent glut filling the genre.
4/5