After missing Colm McCarthy's
adaptation of Mike Carey's book The Girl with All the Gifts at TIFF last year,
I made sure to catch it during its recent run at The Royal.
During a zombie apocalypse, the
residents of an underground bunker race against time to find a cure
using a group of infected children that still somehow possess their
humanity.
I thought this film was pretty solid. I
feel like the mainstream appropriation of the zombie genre has caused
it to get a bit stale (even I've stopped keeping up with The Walking
Dead at this point), but I thought this was a really interesting take
on it. Maybe it is not a coincidental that Girl with All the Gifts is
a UK production, as I recall another Brit coming along about fifteen
years ago with 28 Days Later and giving the zombie genre a much
needed shot in the arm.
Much like the antagonists in Naughty
Dog's 2013 video game The Last of Us, the pathogen in Girl was a fungal
infection that grew outward from the victim's body, which made for some
really unique designs that we're not used to seeing on the
silver screen. Of course, this was not the only thing this movie
shared with The Last of Us, as also present were the aesthetic of the
overgrown urban landscapes and the theme of protecting a child from
the dangers of the waging apocalypse.
The Last of Us also had said children
possessing a partial immunity that others were attempting to exploit.
To be fair though, it was presented much differently here. I enjoyed
the direction that The Girl with All the Gifts went in, as I had
previously assumed the majority, if not all, took place in Day of the
Dead fashion, when in fact that only comprised the first act of the
film.
I thought the performances really
elevated the film, as well. Gemma Arterton and Glenn Close were both
terrific as characters at odds due to their conflicting theologies
and Paddy Considine was solid as always as their gruff team leader. Most
impressive though was the breakout performance of Sennia Nanua as the
title character, Melanie. She brought a dual innocence and
intelligence to the character that I thought gave the story real substance.
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| Sennia Nanua as Melanie in The Girl with All the Gifts. |
Yeah, I dug The Girl with All the Gifts
and am glad to see there are still new avenues to be taken by this
flea-bitten subgenre.
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