*. I think it would have been hard, in 2016, to find a genre more thoroughly exhausted, both as popular entertainment and as metaphor, than the zombie film. That The Girl with All the Gifts doesn’t reinvent anything but still manages to be a zombie film with enough that’s new to hold one’s attention throughout is no small accomplishment.
*. A note on funding, given that we are talking about a zombie movie. Half of the film’s modest £4 million budget came from the partnership of the BFI Film Fund and Creative England, which made it a huge investment for both bodies. These are basically sources of public funding (though Creative England is both publicly and privately funded), and one may question their involvement.
*. It’s argued by some that government funding of the arts (not just film but publishing, theatre, dance, etc.) should go toward projects that can’t be expected to make money because they are more experimental or just non-commercial. Others find this wrongheaded, saying that work that cannot find an audience shouldn’t be supported by public money. I can see where this latter argument is coming from, but on the other hand I wonder how much government support needs to or should be directed toward producing what are purely commercial ventures. I mean, if you can’t get private funding for a zombie flick either you haven’t knocked on enough doors or there’s something about the project that’s not right.
*. That said, I’m glad that someone came through with the money to make The Girl with All the Gifts as it’s really very good. As with most such successful genre pieces it takes the basic formula and gives it just a bit of a tweak to make it somewhat new. The main tweak here is that the zombie apocalypse is brought on by a variation of the cordyceps fungus that, watchers of BBC nature docs will know, turns ants into “zombies.” David Attenborough was my source for knowledge of this fungus, and the filmmakers credit the same inspiration. Gamers, however, were quick to point out that it’s also used in the video game The Last of Us (2013), so it wasn’t entirely new even in the zombie genre. Still, it’s something I hadn’t seen on screen before, and the mannequin zombies waiting to be triggered felt new to me.
*. The cities returning to nature in the video game also seem to have been drawn on in the creation of the urban locations here, though the look wasn’t entirely new (director Colm McCarthy said he was borrowing from Gareth Edwards’s Monsters). In any event, the production design look terrific. Art departments have really got “ruin porn” (the label used by McCarthy) down pat. Some shots were actually taken by a drone unit sent to Pripyat in Ukraine, a city deserted since the Chernobyl disaster. Apparently it mixed in really well with stuff shot in the English Midlands, including a hospital that had been left deserted for over ten years. I’m thinking there may be a deeper social-political message in that.
*. I also wonder if there was any political message in the idea of having the girl Melanie (Sennia Nanua) be Black. In the book she’s apparently blonde and blue-eyed and it’s Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton) who is Black. The political point being that Melanie represents a possible new race of inheritors who will “replace” the last of us. If that is the political point, I’m not sure it’s very progressive. It seems more like they stepped into a mess, sort of like the way the anti-vaccine movement would be accidentally valorized in The Invasion.
*. The zombie basics stay the same, even if they don’t make much sense. The infected are Hungries who only eat human flesh. Why? Not sure. I’m also not sure why it’s only shots to the head that bring them down. Given the high-powered assault rifles the soldiers are armed with, they should be killing the Hungries easily with body shots, but that only seems to slow them down momentarily.
*. The British army doesn’t give a very good account of itself, does it? The base gets overrun and wiped out pretty easily. The gang in The Walking Dead did better defending their prison keep. And what was the army’s bug-out plan? Did they even have one?
*. I’m sure I’m missing something, but I can’t understand the title. Yes, the myth of Pandora is introduced, rather crudely I thought, early on. So we’re meant to read Melanie as Pandora. I get that. But what’s the connection? In what sense is she Pandora? What gifts does she bring humankind? The release of more fungus spores? I can’t think of any gift she’s responsible for, much less “all” of them. How does she represent a punishment sent from the gods? What is her box? What does the connection between Melanie and Pandora mean?
*. The script isn’t great. Meaning that when the action slows down and people start to talk, usually just to introduce some necessary exposition, things stop dead. But the cast works really well. Glenn Close is the cold villainess of a certain age that she seems to be a natural for (the next year she’d play a similar role in Seven Sisters). Gemma Arterton is down-to-earth and relatable. Paddy Considine didn’t strike me as much of a soldier, but then I think he was just a bloke from the reserves. Sennia Nanua is great, but perhaps too likeable, too cute. I couldn’t follow her quick swings from resourceful little kid to stone cold killer and back again.
*. But you can still put me down as satisfied. Looking over some of my notes on the genre, this is probably my favorite zombie movie of the past ten years. The genre has definitely been stuck in a long slide since we hit peak zombie, which I previously reckoned as 2007. The 2010s were awful, giving us such low-grade, high-budget, parodic stuff as World War Z, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, The Dead Don’t Die, and Zombieland: Double Tap. I don’t think The Girl with All the Gifts reinvents the zombie film or does anything to revive the genre, but it does stand out as being one of the few solid entries from the past decade. Thanks England!
Alex on Film 
The Resident Evil movies were GREAT zombie films!
I avoided the book on this like the plague. Pun intended 😉
Somebody’s up early! Or late . . .
I thought the best Resident Evil movies were the first ones. By the time we got to the 2010s and Afterlife, Retribution and Final Chapter I thought they’d gone way off the rails as far as making any kind of sense.
Very early. I woke up because my blood sugar went high so I had to take a shot of insulin. Sometimes I can’t go back to sleep after that 😦
I concur. I never watched the RE films for any kind of coherence, but straight up knock’em sock’em action.
Hope you’re stable now. I got up early because a skunk sprayed right outside the house and I couldn’t breathe . . .
RE was all about the action. And I think they’re going to keep going with the series. Not sure how I feel about that.
Yeah, it’s all good. Sorry to hear about your stinky experience. never had to deal with the live thing, just dead ones and they’re bad enough.
I thought that “The Final Chapter” was the final movie? I don’t count the animated movies. Those I can see them churning out but I think they run closer to videogame franchise than the “Alice” and movie franchise.
After the final chapter you can always hit the reboot button.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil:_Welcome_to_Raccoon_City
Oh my goodness. I liked the movies because I wasn’t into the videogame franchise and the whole “Alice” sub-theme worked well for me.
This reboot looks, ummm, not as interesting. I’ll probably take a “long wait and see” approach. Have you seen all the RE movies? and do you think you’ll watch this out of the gate or give it a pass?
I think I’ve covered all the live-action movies to date. I’m with you as far as not planning to be the first in line to get on the reboot. Though I’ll usually watch anything with zombies with it. This one out now where they go to Zombie Vegas doesn’t sound that great though.
Zombie Vegas, isn’t that the recent movie with Dave Batista as the lead character? A couple of people have reviewed it and I won’t be bothering with it at all.
Yeah, that’s the one. Army of the Dead. I keep forgetting the name because it’s so generic. They really should have tried to work Vegas into the title. I’ll pick it up at the library when it comes out on DVD. Which shouldn’t be long.
Sounds like it’s a candidate for free movie on prime.
You do know that England and Britain are not interchangable terms, right? Why would you think England for BFI investment?
Creative England.
British Film Institute.
Shot in England too.
Sigh.
Scottish director. But I just wanted to thank England. They have nicer bloggers.
You are asking for it now, Nosferatu, what did they teach you are the Charlie Chan school of racial insensitivity?
What’s wrong with liking English bloggers? I think they’re very nice.
Fascists have nice uniforms and make the trains run in time, and I guess that’s what Torygraph readers like yourself want.
Well I do like it when the trains run on time. Never been big on uniforms though.
So why read fascist propaganda?
I only read the sports pages.
Where the film reviews are?
And the crosswords and sudoku. When was the last time you looked at a print copy of a newspaper? Stand-alone weekend review sections are a thing of the past.
What is a ‘print copy of a newspaper’? I get my news via a jack socket in the back of my head, which aggravates the Ethernet.
There’s a red pill you can take for that. You do realize that this whole “Scotland” thing is just a simulacrum, right?
It replaced the defunct ‘Canada’ simulacrum if I remember correctly.
Could be. I’m running Canada 2.0 and it kicks ass.
Is that why you pay for CBC radio?
I pay for it because it’s the law. Do you do your bit to fund the BFI?
As a UK taxpayer, yes. So it’s not only the concern of the English, Bozo.
How concerned are you?
Concerned about the boggle-eyed muppets I have to deal with online.
Muppets? You’re calling out Fraggle? That’s not nice. Did you not have a Tickle-Me Elmo when you were a wee lad?
I’ll tickle your Elmo if you keep this up Bunty. Won’t have a bad word said about Fraggle, Queen of t’internet. You, on the other hand….the only show you’ll ever run is a puppet show.
Fraggles were muppets. What about these much-beloved creations bothers you? Getting to the sources of your anger is a deep dive.
Fraggles are muppets? Nope, not true. You are just showing your own ignorance now. You’ll be taking a deep dive into Lake Ontario if you keep this up, sunshine.
*sigh*
From Wikipedia (emphasis added):
Fraggle Rock (also known as Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock or Fraggle Rock with Jim Henson’s Muppets) is a children’s puppet television series about interconnected societies of Muppet creatures, created by Jim Henson.
Fake news! Witch hunt! Great things will happen!
BFI. Belvedere Rd. Lambeth, London SE1 8XT that’s in England, they just say ‘British’ to be nice and inclusive to you outlanders.
I mean, technically speaking couldn’t I be a member of the BFI? I just have to make a donation. I didn’t mean to trigger Dix but I guess this is a Scottish thing.
Oh yes anyone can be a member if they cough up some dosh, even Scottish people.
So why can’t Nosferatu/Alex be equally nice and inclusive instead of his mindless hate-speech?
Who could be nicer and more inclusive than me? I’m sweeter than sweetness itself.
Sigh.
Because all you two do is bicker back and forth so I presume it was his turn?
Sigh.
I enjoyed this movie, different enough to hold the attention. Though I did like WWZ, (haven’t sen the others on your list) because Brad Pitt & Mireille Enos did a good job. Mireille Enos is not given enough leads in movies I really ike her.
I liked Enos in that series The Killing. Thought she was totally wasted in WWZ. She had almost nothing to do. Come to think of it, she literally had nothing to do.
That’s where I first saw her, don’t know anyone else who watched the Seattle version as everyone here was going on about the Danish version with Sophie Grabhol. It’s where I first saw Joel Kinnaman too and I like him a lot. I suppose Enos was wasted a bit in WWZ, but at least she got her face in a big movie so not under the radar. Just found The KIlling on Prime so going to give it a rewatch.
Yeah, they were both good. I never saw the Danish version. But I only saw the first season of the Enos/Kinnaman show because they seem to have never put the other seasons on DVD. Seems to have had a tortured production and distribution history.
You can buy the DVD’s now but some of the reviews say it doesn’t work in Canada.
OK, I just checked and you can get all four seasons now on DVD but they’re crazy expensive. Like they cost 4x as much as the first season. Not sure what’s going on there. I guess I’ll get to it sometime. Watching The Deuce now.
Haven’t heard of that. Also I checked out its a lot cheaper buying the seasons on Prime over streaming so I’m going to do that.
I like it so far. Maybe not in the top tier of cable shows but the next best, which is pretty good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deuce_(TV_series)
Cheers, will check it out.
Sounds good, this. But isn’t a bit concerning – a politically funded film with a political message? Surely there’s some law against that…
I think any political message was kind of accidental, like the anti-vaxxer stuff in The Invasion. Replacement theory wasn’t a big thing when this came out.
Just wanted to show some extra love for The Girl with All the Gifts with this comment! ❤
It’s a good one!