At a military base, ten years after a fungal plague kicked off the zombie apocalypse, a group of unusual children are kept in cells, allowed out only when strapped into chairs. Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is one of those children, happy even while abused by her military captors, particularly Sgt. Parks (Paddy Considine). She’s the best student in the class taught by Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton), the only one who treats the kids with kindness. Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) experiments on the children. On the day the doctor takes Melanie, the based is attacked.
Just when I’ve once again declared zombie films to be dead, we get The Girl With All the Gifts, an emotional, exciting, and original take on that too often used sub-genre. We simply don’t see this skill and talent in zombie films, or most films generally. Everything works on every level.
It starts with a screenplay, adapted by the Mike Carey from his novel, that doesn’t play into cheap stereotypes. Everyone has reasons for what they do and speaks like a real person would. We’re not handfed anything. We’re dropped into a story in progress with explanations coming only when they are both needed and when it makes sense. No one just decides to rattle off recent history or the rules of the game for the hell of it. As for theme, there are several that wrap around each other, but man’s inhumanity to man is a good place to start. It’s also good to brush up on your Greek mythology. You’ll be left with plenty to think about.
It was nice to see Geema Arterton finally given a good part. She’s an excellent actress who should be an A-lister, but over and over she’s ended up in works that don’t have depth. Here is her part, and she sings in it. Paddy Considine, an actor I didn’t recall, though I’ve seen apparently seen him in films before, is as good as Arterton. And this is the best performance by Glenn Close in a very long time. As for Sennia Nanua, there is no excuse for her not being nominated for an Academy Award. She was twelve? So what. She was excellent. Director Colm McCarthy deserves praise as well. Beyond his apparent skill in working with actors, this is a well shot film, with beautiful and breathtaking mise-en-scène, stuck between brutal carnage. I’ll have to keep to vague compliments over specifics as I don’t want to give away too much as this is a film worth experiencing without pre-knowledge.
Train to Busan was 2016’s hyped zombie film, but it is a lesser league. The Girl with All the Gifts seems to have been loved by everyone who’s seen it, but it hasn’t received the attention it deserves. This is an excellent film and one of the very best zombie films.