The Girl with All the Gifts

Dir: Colm McCarthy

2016

****

It’s not quite accurate to say that 2016’s The Girl with All the Gifts was adapted from M.R. Carey’s celebrated novel as both film and book were in fact written at the same time. Being a cynic, I thought this would end up being a telling result of someone letting their career and opportunity come before creativity but it isn’t. Carey clearly has his ambitions, the novel and film are both rather different anyway and maybe he just didn’t want someone coming along and messing with his story, better to do it yourself for peace of mind and/or profit. The book looks at the lives of five characters and each chapter is seen through different viewpoints, while the film centres on just one, the girl of the title. The film itself is a zombie thriller at heart, set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. It nothing the genre hasn’t seen before, although it feels more like a video game rather than a film. Indeed, it is uncomfortably similar to the Play Station 4 game ‘Last of Us’ which also features zombies born of a fungal infection that sprout spore pods. As in the film, the player can move about the crowds of zombies as long as they cover up their smell and are silent at all times. The main character in the game is a young girl, who may hold the secret to the cure, just like the film. It could be coincidence, but the similarity is striking. There are elements of Dawn of the Dead, Bodysnatchers and 28 Days Later but it is done well, is never predictable and is always entertaining. The idea is rather original though, as it centres around the children born from people who were 9 months pregnant at the time of infection. These children literally ate their way out of their mothers and were rounded up and captured by the authorities as their ability to act and think as humans makes them unique and could lead to a cure. The children are imprisoned in an old air base and taught under strict guidelines while also experimented on. Gemma Arterton plays the kid’s school teacher who becomes close and emotionally attached to the school’s brightest child Melanie. She is monitored under the watchful eye of Sgt Eddie Parks (played by Paddy Considine) who runs the unit under strict guidelines and Dr Caroline Caldwell (played by Glenn Close) who experiments and dissects the children in the hope of finding a cure. When the base becomes overrun by zombies, or ‘Hungries’ as they are known here, the four of them, plus a couple of solders, find themselves on the run and looking for shelter. When they learn that the bigger base in London has fallen they realise they’re on their own with Melanie their only source of survival but not in the way they had first imagined. It is fairly standard stuff as far as the zombie genre goes but it makes up for any formulaic familiarity with its rather clever and interpretive ending. The ending could be seen as both a happy one and a sad one, it really does depend on your point of view which makes for quite a unique conclusion. Arterton is convincing, Considine plays the part well and Close is her brilliant self, but it is newcomer Sennia Nanua as Melanie who steals the show. Her performance is perfect, when in all honesty it had to be for the film to have worked. The direction isn’t bad, some of the aerial footage was shot by a second unit in the ghost town of Prypjat, near Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. Colm McCarthy said "I was very interested in post-apocalyptic imagery and urban exploration. We wanted to surprise people rather than have people coming in expecting a studio level film. We sent a micro drone unit to Pripyat, Chernobyl to shoot helicopter footage with Pripyat doubling for urban London." And he succeeded for the best part of the film but here and there, the film suffered from looking a little too CGI, with the colours being often too garish to believe. McCarthy has stated that Gareth Edward’s 2010 film Monsters was a big influence on the film and he even spoke with Edwards before filming to ask his opinion on things. I can’t quite see it myself but he claims Monsters is the films main reference point, so I don’t know if this means he really achieved his goal or not, but I liked it all the same. It’s an easy watch with a pleasantly original ending and a brilliant debut from a future star.