The Girl with All the Gifts: A Chilling Post-Apocalyptic Thriller
A remarkable post-apocalyptic thriller centers on a zombie girl who grapples with a thirst for blood while retaining her human intellect.
More than a decade has passed since a zombie epidemic swept across the globe. Nearly all of humanity has been infected, with pockets of uninfected survivors holding out in military bases. One such base in southern England houses children who were in utero when their mothers were infected. Like other zombies, these adolescents crave human flesh and will attack if they catch a whiff of it. However, they otherwise behave like normal, intelligent children their age. They can be conversed with calmly, provided one applies a gel that masks human scent. When the base’s defenses crumble under a zombie onslaught, only a handful of soldiers, Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine), teacher Helen (Gemma Arterton), Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close), and Melanie (Sennia Nanua), the most intelligent of the zombie children, manage to escape. They decide to head for headquarters, a journey that takes them through the abandoned city of London.
The film uses aerial shots of Pripyat, the abandoned city in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to depict the desolate landscapes of abandoned London.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton’s famous observation applies not only to science but also to genre fiction, where many outstanding works are created by adding new ideas to previously existing masterpieces.
In the case of Mike Carey’s British novel and the British film adaptation, “The Girl with All the Gifts,” the pre-existing masterpiece is the 2013 video game “The Last of Us,” a pinnacle of its genre. The parallels between the two narratives are undeniable. In both, the zombie disease is transmitted through spores of a mysterious fungus that gradually transforms zombies into semi-plant creatures. In both, the zombies are blind, allowing the heroes to slip past them with skill rather than fighting them at every encounter. And in both, a girl with unique abilities is a key character who may hold the key to humanity’s salvation. In both narratives, the question arises: is it justifiable to sacrifice the life of this extraordinary child for a vaccine whose effectiveness is far from guaranteed?
A Unique Coming-of-Age Story
Nevertheless, “The Girl with All the Gifts” is by no means a clone of the video game but rather a development and reinterpretation of its ideas in the Newtonian tradition. While “The Last of Us” centers on an adult male who makes the main plot decisions, “The Girl with All the Gifts” is Melanie’s story, the story of a zombie girl. Her adult companions are merely that – companions – even though they are played by well-known actors. Essentially, “The Girl with All the Gifts” is a peculiar coming-of-age story in which Melanie journeys from a young prisoner to a leader of the survivors. It is both a captivating and frightening tale, because, despite her girlish humanity, Melanie is not human. The film reminds us of this fact repeatedly and brutally.
“The Girl with All the Gifts” would not satisfy genre fans if it lacked bloody carnage and live devouring. The film delivers all of this, fully earning its R rating. However, it’s hard to call it a “zombie action movie” because the gore is not an end in itself but part of the genre’s trappings. Scottish director Colm McCarthy (known for his work on “Doctor Who” and “Sherlock”) is primarily concerned not with the killings but with the conflicts within the surviving team and the gradual unveiling of Melanie as the central character. Figuratively and literally, the film removes the muzzle from the girl at a certain point (the children at the base were kept with the same precautions as Hannibal Lecter) and then observes what she does when she gains freedom and how her understanding of the world, her companions, and herself evolves.
In the book, Melanie is white, and Helen is black. In the film, it’s the opposite.
A Star is Born
It would seem that newcomer Sennia Nanua had no chance to stand out alongside Arterton and Considine, let alone six-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close. However, the film is so skillfully constructed that the stars do not overshadow the girl but support her, helping her shine in a role with a vast range, from a school “nerd” to a ruthless killer. And Nanua excels. “The Girl with All the Gifts” is worth seeing to enjoy the girl’s performance and appreciate the moral, ethical, and psychological questions her character raises.
The film had a modest budget of only 4 million pounds, but this is not noticeable or distracting. Where scale and mass are required, the film creates them, and the action is just right. If there were more of it, the film would be reduced to a flat-out “kill-fest,” and if there were less, the film would be too talkative for zombie thriller fans. As it is, the film is engaging, intelligent, shocking, somewhat unconventional, and thought-provoking.
However, for all its merits, “The Girl with All the Gifts” does not break out of the genre’s boundaries and become a spectacle for everyone, not just those who love dark post-apocalyptic stories about the living dead and ruined cities. But if you consider yourself a connoisseur of the genre, you will regret missing “The Girl with All the Gifts” in theaters.