The Girl With All The Gifts, (2016)

   

    In a heavily fortified military base is a school classroom for children. These children, however, are in five-point restraints and shackled to wheelchairs. They are wheeled in for daily classes and back to their cells afterwards, all under the strict supervision of armed personnel. Among these children is Melanie, a girl with a surprisingly sunny and optimistic disposition considering her lot. 

       One day, Melanie is taken for an experiment and gets a look at the outside world - and the siege of “hungries,” or the undead, that surround the base, trying to get in.

       Well, things go awry, as things are wont to do, and soon a small number of people escape the overrun base and flee into the infected British countryside, along with Melanie, who is muzzled and cuffed just in case her true nature comes out. 

The first half of The Girl With All The Gifts shares only Melanie’s perspective and we, the viewer, are kept off balance in a state of speculation, but in a good way, as the sense of mystery and tension builds. It is from this viewpoint that we see the others in Melanie’s life as she sees them.

Soon, however, this haze of mystery is blown away and a more traditional Zombie Apocalypse-style film unfolds, with a band of survivors wandering an undead-infested wasteland in search for safety. Unfortunately, the members of this group must also wrestle with their distrust of one another, and fears of getting shot, directed, or eaten by one of their own.

Melanie, it appears, is among a second-generation of those afflicted with a fungal infection around the brain, (the movie’s explanation for the death, reanimation and flesh-eating tendencies of its antagonists,) and is thought to be the source of a cure for it once a proper, if terminal, operation can be performed upon her.

The storyline is a very original one: introducing new facets and stages to the zombie genre while still managing to keep the whole “flesh-eating, infectious bite, killed-only-with-a-head-shot” stuff from standard walking dead fare. The zombies, (or “hungries” as they are referred to here,) are runners, both the original and the second generation ones. They move, growl and chitter akin the World War Z’s dead. (Melanie and the next gens seem to be able to control themselves until they can smell the living. Then, the ol’ appetite kicks in!) The zombie’s looks are neat and classic, and not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

The acting is top-notch, of course with the young newcomer that plays Melanie making a very engaging center of the film, but it was Glenn Close’s scientist, Dr. Caldwell, who I really enjoyed. She came off as both malevolent and strangely compassionate. 

Although the movie had a decent flow to its action, it definitely could be divided into chapters that stood apart from one another, too: At the base, on the run, the second stage, the next generation… I had to check to see if there were more than one person directing this!

Despite my nitpicking, on the Zombie Movie Rubric, The Girl With All The Gifts tallied itself up a whopping 3.45 out of a potential 4! This earns it a hearty recommendation from me, (despite running zombies!)

Here is a YouTube teaser, The Girl With All The Gifts. the whet your appetite.