The Girl With All the Gifts (2016) Movie Review
Written By: FR
Edited By: Grave Reviews Staff
Film Information
Director: Colm McCarthy
Writer: Mike Carey
Producers: Will Clarke, Lizzie Francke, Richard Holmes, Andy Mayson, et. al.
Date Released: Month Day, Year
Cast:
Sennia Nanua as Melanie
Fisayo Akinade as Kieran Gallagher
Dominique Tipper as Devani
Paddy Considine as Sgt Eddie Parks
Anamaria Marinca as Dr. Jean Selkirk
Gemma Arterton as Helen Justineau
Anthony Welsh as Dillon
Glenn Close as Dr. Caroline Caldwell
Grace McGee as Anne
Eli Lane as Kenny
Connor Pratt as Peter
Joe Lomas as Joe
Rating = 3/5 Graves
***May contain some spoilers***
Synopsis
The movie is set in England around ten years after a fungal based zombie apocalypse swept the world. Survivors are holed up at military bases that are under constant assault by the infected that the humans have come to call ‘hungries’. At one such base Melanie (Sennia Nanua), a young girl is kept imprisoned along with a bunch of other children who we see early on are actually all infected themselves (and so hated and feared by the majority of the survivors), yet somehow able to function as normal as long as they are not hungry. Unknown to them they are secretly being experimented on by Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) who hopes to create a vaccine using their brain tissue and spinal fluid. One day the base finally becomes over run, Caldwell, Melanie, Sgt. Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine), a few other soldiers, and Melanie’s beloved teacher Helen (Gemma Arterton) manage to escape and head to London where they hope to establish contact with other nearby bases.
Gore Factor
Like all other zombie movies, this film is oozing with blood and guts. The portrayal of infliction of pain and injury is depicted with some detail of blood and gore. The film contains fairly frequent scenes of violence involving zombie-like creatures who have fallen prey to the “Rage” virus. These include scenes where soldiers are seen shooting at the infected, several of which are shot in the head, with bloodletting visible. In addition, there are scenes of the zombies attacking and biting the humans. While most of the shooting scenes are brief and the flesh-eating scenes are implied, they occur fairly frequently and are accompanied by bloodletting.
The Grave Review
The Girl With All the Gifts (2016) is a movie that took a more-than-tired sub-genre, and put a fresh spin on it, the results of which is a well-crafted story that was spun with plenty of intricacies. Sure we’ve seen this story a hundred times before, but here, that story is smart, and it never reverts to the dreaded info dump or to too many overused tropes to get its point across.
The movie may be about a group of characters trying to survive a plague that turns people into infected “Hungries” that want to eat their face off, and of their mission to find a cure to the madness so that they can go on living, but that’s about all that’s familiar in this one. The place where the story ends up is pretty bold, and refreshing in a way.
The ending was bold a shocking, to say the least.
We also loved the way that the Hungries would stand around like they’d been paused, until they heard or smelled something edible come close. That made for a few intense scenes that mad us hold our breath.
Newcomer Sennia Nanua is the star of the show here, and she carries the movie admirably on her young shoulders. Considering that she’s sharing the screen with top-notch actors like Glenn Close and Paddy Considine, that’s saying something. She’s all kinds of lovable as Melanie, to the point where you just want to reach through the screen and hug her, but at the same time she gave off a creepy aura of someone who could snap and rip a throat out at any minute.
Overall though, this is a very solid flick that anyone can well to check out. It is a well-made spin on the infected zombie sub-genre. But the ending will throw you off a bit.
Because of the foregoing reasons, Grave Reviews gives The Girl With All the Gifts (2016) three graves out of five graves.
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