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Title: The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Sennia Nanua | ... | Melanie | |
| Fisayo Akinade | ... | Kieran Gallagher | |
| Dominique Tipper | ... | Devani | |
| Paddy Considine | ... | Sgt Eddie Parks | |
| Anamaria Marinca | ... | Dr. Jean Selkirk | |
| Gemma Arterton | ... | Helen Justineau | |
| Anthony Welsh | ... | Dillon | |
| Glenn Close | ... | Dr. Caroline Caldwell | |
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Mia Garcha | ... | Melanie Double |
|
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Grace McGee | ... | Anne |
|
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Eli Lane | ... | Kenny |
|
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Connor Pratt | ... | Peter |
|
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Joe Lomas | ... | Joe |
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Will Brooks | ... | Painted Boy |
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Joel Sheldon | ... | T-Shirt Boy |
In a dystopian near future, humanity has been ravaged by a mysterious fungal disease. The afflicted are robbed of all free will and turned into flesh-eating 'hungries'. Humankind's only hope is a small group of hybrid children who crave human flesh but retain the ability to think and feel. The children go to school at an army base in rural Britain, where they're subjected to cruel experiments by Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close). School teacher Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) grows particularly close to an exceptional girl named Melanie (Sennia Nanua), thus forming a special bond. But when the base is invaded, the trio escape with the assistance of Sgt. Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine) and embark on a perilous journey of survival, during which Melanie must come to terms with who she is.
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Before The Waking Dead came along, people thought the zombie subgenre was dead in the water. The zombie films for the most part just weren't able to capture the right tone and essence. So even though there's been a million of them and most of them are much of the same thing, I always appreciate the ones that bring something new and fresh to the genre. The Girl With All the Gifts does just that.
The British post-apocalyptic film takes place after most of the world has been decimated to due to an unknown fungal disease, with only a few military bases left. The twist here is that on this military base is a group of second generation children who are infected with the disease but are under control of their senses for the most part. That is, when they aren't smelling human flesh.
After several life threatening sequences, a few soldiers, a teacher, and one of those second generation children (named Melanie) embark on a trek to get to the next safe zone, with their base being overrun by zombies (or hungries as they call them). Melanie, a seemingly more intelligent and aware child, forms a special bond with the teacher, named Helen Justineau and played by Gemma Arterton. This is the one human connection that I think is worth caring about. Since you don't get much backstory on the soldiers, including one played well by Paddy Considine, you are almost forced into caring for the two. And that's the one thing I was constantly hoping we would get more of, character depth and backstory. It just becomes difficult to figure out who you're going to root for when you don't have much in way of their backstory to think about.
With that said, I appreciated that this film involved a different approach to the zombie genre. Yes, there is the subplot involving someone looking for a cure (which is always something that comes up) but the more calculated approach to the pacing, and reserved display of gore, The Girl With All the Gifts feels like a fresh entry into the genre. Heck, have we ever had our lead character be an second generation infected child? Just by those standards this was something original.
7.1/10