'The Girl With All the Gifts' - Movie Review

"The Girl With All the Gifts" is a near future SF movie - or a zombie horror movie, depending on how you look at it. Probably best to think of it as both. Our two main characters are Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) and Melanie (Sennia Nanua). We're first introduced to Melanie, who is a very intelligent child of about 10 or 11 ... but clearly there's something about her and the other children tended in the concrete bunker - they're immobilized in wheelchairs before being pushed to class, where Justineau teaches them. It eventually becomes clear that the Zombie Apocalypse has happened outside - and that these children are the second generation. They're intelligent, but they're infected, and still like to eat flesh (and a bite will infect a normal human and turn them into a first generation, not-intelligent zombie). But the war on the zombies isn't going well, and Justineau and Melanie end up on the run with a few other humans.

The movie is well thought out, well done, dark, and depressing. Sennia Nanua is outstanding: without her, the title character couldn't possibly have been as well played and the movie wouldn't have worked nearly as well. Gemma Arterton was typically very good, I thought Glenn Close's character was a bit flat. Paddy Considine was very good though: he seems initially to be a nasty military man, but you're forced as the movie progresses to realize he's not a bad person.

The movie was worth a watch, and for fans of SF who don't mind a dark vision of the future, you should definitely take a look. Probably good for fans of horror too (although I'm not much of an expert on horror).