Review: The Girl with All the Gifts

Dir. Colm McCarthy (2016)

I`m going to start this review with a warning, the less you know about this movie going into it, the more interesting the story may be. So I'm going to be pretty vague on story details in this review.

If you’re at all into horror, it's entirely possible that you’re wholly burnt out on zombie movies.

That's reasonable, at one point in time zombies were as prevalent and boring as many superhero movies are today. If you give it a chance though, you’ll find that the Girl with all the Gifts brings some truly interesting new elements to the table and sticks the landing in a bold, inventive, and fresh way.

The acting across the board is pretty solid, Glenn Close is (as usual) phenomenal. Paddy Considine and Gemma Arterton are both interesting characters and believable in their roles, but their portrayals do suffer in a way I’ll describe later. The real standout here though is Sennia Nanua in the title character of Melanie, she truly IS the girl with all the gifts. Her performance has a stumble here and there, but overall Sienna single handedly carries most the movie on her emoting power alone. Much is asked of her as an actor and, for the most part, she really delivers! The biggest problem with the movie is that it desperately needed more character moments with the characters of Sgt Eddie and Helen. Both characters gave off the impression of having more going on below the surface of their personalities, and fleshing them out a little bit more would have really made the story stronger.

The narrative starts out strong, establishing a unique central mystery and clear sense of place. The movie doesn`t spoon-feed you answers but it also doesn’t hold your hand. It's able to pull off mysterious and meaningful without dipping into pretension.  The situation our characters find themselves in gets turned on its head several times throughout the course of the movie. While this is great because you`ll never really know what's going to happen next, the film is never able to recover that initial sense of strong space and mystery, instead, occasionally settling into something a bit more tired and familiar.

Fortunately, this narrative uneasiness is salvaged by several truly memorable characters, all with clashing yet understandable motivations. There are no real cut and dry villains here, just people with very different goals. The movie’s ending is bombastic, unexpected, and probably pretty divisive. As someone who’s seen way too many zombie movies, I was thrilled to have an ending that felt brand new while still leaving me satisfied...but I can see where some may be disappointed with the direction it goes in.

Another point to the movie’s credit is its budget. At a reported budget of 5 million pounds, this is a post-apocalyptic movie with visuals more interesting than many I’ve seen with ten times the cost. Given the low price point, that alone both speaks to the focus of the filmmakers and to the excess of most Hollywood blockbusters.

In terms of content, there`s some minor gore and harsh language as is expected. It never reaches the gross-out levels of something like Day of the Dead, in fact it feels like something that’s just a couple snips away from a PG13. 

So, should you see the Girl with all the Gifts? If some uneven narrative fluctuations and minor gore aren’t enough to scare you away from yet another zombie movie, then you’re going to receive some unique and powerful gifts from an unforgettable girl!

-Josh Evans