THE BAD – Clare Healy
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The Girl With All The Gifts is an adaptation of M. R. Carey’s recent bestseller and follows a young girl named Melanie. Born partially infected by a brain-devouring fungus that has already claimed a portion of the global population, the film chronicles her tragic quest for acceptance and salvation. What kinds of gifts does the film give to the viewer? Unless you’re hoping for half-hearted directing and blatant product placement in your stocking this year, not a lot.
Much of the film’s appeal comes from its post-apocalyptic setting and the creatures (“hungries”, as they are exclusively referred to, following the example of The Walking Dead in its deliberate shying away from the “Z” word) that feature as secondary antagonists. While the gory and violent scenes are well-executed, the film fails at crucial points that can’t be saved by special effects. What should be rigorous exercises in world-building are more like a few reluctant jumping jacks. This leaves Glenn Close’s character, Dr Caldwell, to morph into an all-knowing, ageing medicine woman to provide exposition with a few unnaturally precise lines of dialogue.
The moral dilemmas that arise from our hero’s young age and the atrocities she is capable of committing propose themselves early on as a powerful theme, particularly in scenes of sweet-faced children strapped by their extremities to a Hannibal Lecter-esque contraption. Alas, this angle goes critically underdeveloped. Instead, the script opts to explore the blurred lines between right and wrong, summed up in one almost-profound remark from Sergeant Parks: “I’ve never met a good person. I’ve never met a bad one either.” For a film that urges itself to deal with the complexity of human beings, it doesn’t worry too much about offering up characters more sophisticated than the zombies snapping their jaws at them.
The director comes off as a commuter, occupied with getting from point A to point B without much regard for the journey in between. As a result, we get a line-up of hollow characters whose behaviour changes according to the storyline’s fancy: sometimes they act too rashly, other times they hold back until an invisible countdown dings zero and they can go back to reasoning like real people (or as real as the actors portraying them will allow). Admittedly, Close brings as much sincerity as is possible to such a clumsily-written role, wherein her seniority is initially set up as unquestionable and then deflated gradually, punctured by a series of sharp whims. But the majority of her co-stars are strikingly spiritless, appearing as though simply reading the lines, or waiting for their turn to speak. Newcomer Sennia Nenua, who plays the titular character, seems to have landed herself in the increasingly and inexplicably lucrative vocation of “apathetic child actor” (see Moonrise Kingdom).
The unconventional soundtrack is effective but isn’t enough to salvage the director’s struggle with building tension, regularly stamping it out like he’s playing Whack-A-Mole and escalating and de-escalating most semblances of conflict before any meaningful climax can be reached. Check this film out if you enjoyed the book; otherwise, don’t sweat about missing it—it’s a weak attempt to latch onto a craze that’s already on its way out.
THE GOOD – Oisín McElhinney
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This is not your conventional zombie movie. Which is fortunate, because this critic hates zombie movies. Colm McCarthy’s gripping adaption of M.R. Carey’s eponymous novel is much more than a generic horror thriller, giving audiences a surprisingly intelligent insight into a child’s curious mind in a bleak, dystopian near future. Closer in tone and perspective to Children of Men than World War Z, the film is more preoccupied with inherently human issues such as isolation, friendship and morality – in particular, its conflict with ruthless scientific objectivity.
The Girl with All the Gifts opens with an eerie whispering voiceover from Melanie, a young girl strapped to a chair in a prison-like cell in a murky military bunker somewhere in England. Melanie (played superbly by Sennia Nanua) seems like any other girl: she is cheerful, friendly and clever, with a fondness for Greek mythology. She idolises her teacher Helen Justineau, convincingly and movingly portrayed by Gemma Arterton. Except for one key difference: she is infected by a pathogenic fungus, which has caused a global pandemic by destroying humans’ mental functions and turning them into cannibalistic zombies. Melanie and the group of children quarantined inside The Beacon, a heavily armed military base run by authoritarian Sergeant Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine), retain the ability to think, making them vital to scientist Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) who experiments on their brains in order to find a vaccine, much to the horror of teacher Helen.
When the base is overrun by the ‘hungries’ a muzzled Melanie is taken with Sgt. Parks, Dr Caldwell and Helen to a post-apocalyptic London as they try to survive long enough for the scientist to find a cure for the fungus. Gradually, despite the initial insistence that she is nothing more than a dangerous mutant, Melanie demonstrates her survival abilities as she saves Helen’s life repeatedly. The humanisation of her character in a world where she is regarded as nothing more than a threat, existing to be experimented on, inverts the general notion that the protagonist in a zombie movie must be a ‘normal’ person. Even more intriguing is Dr Caldwell, an icily logical scientist solely focused on finding a cure at all costs. She makes for an unorthodox villain, because the audience can empathise with this ideological perspective and the utilitarian logic she operates under. If anything, she may be seen as an anti-hero.
The pace of this film is slower than that of conventional thrillers. The tension is generated from the superb character development, grimly claustrophobic cinematography and spine-chilling musical score. From the opening sequences in the military base to the deserted streets of the capital, the screen is saturated by a gloomy palate of greens, greys and browns, all captured by elegant camera work. Even at the very conclusion, the tone is dark, bordering on nihilistic, with an ingenious and grimly ironic twist that feels almost mocking, à la A Clockwork Orange in its falsely uplifting nature. Overall, an exceptionally cerebral zombie-horror flick.
