‘The Girl With All the Gifts’ is Beautiful and Troubling
By: Sarah Callen
Tags: Zombies, Movie Review, Movies, Film Reviews, The Girl With The Gifts

Beware of the fungus among us.

The Girl With All the Gifts drops us into a post-apocalyptic world where a fungus has spread throughout the population, transforming people into zombies, what they call “hungries”. We meet Melanie, a young girl who is a hungry who is also shockingly human. When the hungries overtake their secure compound, Melanie escapes along with Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) and her teacher, Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton). They, along with a few soldiers, seek safety and shelter.

If you haven’t yet seen The Girl With All the Gifts, I recommend you go and watch it. I went into the action knowing little about the film itself and I’m really glad that I did. This made the story’s unraveling all the more interesting and intense. I don’t want to spoil your opportunity to go into it blind.

The Girl With All the Gifts movie poster

With so many different films and tv shows about zombies, it can be challenging to create something truly unique in this genre, but that’s exactly what The Girl With All the Gifts did. The hungries aren’t the slow travelers that we’ve seen in other movies, but move with agility and speed. They also go into a dormant sleep state.

Possibly the most interesting part of this new brand of zombies, is that they eventually decompose together and sprout seed pods that we learn could spell the end for humankind. Though Dr. Caldwell makes it clear that it takes a great deal of force to open up these pods, this adds an element of terror to the story — the imminent destruction of mankind will do that to you. The seed-pod structure of decaying hungries is both horrific and shockingly beautiful.

The film also departs from the typical zombie film with its choice of protagonist. The Girl With All the Gifts primarily focuses on the female characters, with the male military officers supporting them in their quest to save themselves. What a departure from the typical action film that has a male protagonist leading the way!

By dropping us directly into the story, the film is able to build the world by weaving it strategically into the action — we learn the rules of this post-apocalyptic world as we’re being led through it by this unlikely group of heroes. Because there was no opening exposition, I leaned into the action and paid closer attention to everything that was happening on screen.

The Girl With All the Gifts looks so much better than so many other post-apocalyptic films I have seen before. One of the most breathtaking scenes is when the group has to pass through a group of dormant hungries. While watching them silently walk through that crowd of decaying bodies, I found myself holding my breath, just waiting to see which one of the group was going to set off the hoard. To me, this was a much more powerful and suspenseful scene than the traditional zombie action scenes we’re used to watching.

The ending is probably my favorite part of the entire film. It beautifully flips the traditional story on its head — instead of the humans conquering the zombies, Melanie releases the pods of the fungus, making the toxin airborne. She effectively kills humanity in order to save herself and her kind. Everyone is now infected, just like her. Often in these films, we root for the heroes to exterminate the virus so they can live happily ever after, but this different ending gave me pause. This departure from norms made me take time to think about how I interact with the world around me.

Because 2020 is the year of the pandemic, I couldn’t help but think about how these two different views of the zombie genre reflect how many people are thinking about the virus that humanity is currently battling. Some are waiting for a time when the pandemic is miraculously gone, while others are planning for a way for us to live with the virus. It’s probably way too meta of a reading of the film, but we really do bring our context to whatever we’re watching.

The Girl With All the Gifts is based on a novel, which has some striking differences. In the book, Melanie is a fair-skinned girl with long hair and Miss Justineau is a tall Black woman in her 40’s. In the film, however, Melanie is a young Black girl and Miss Justineau is a fair-skinned woman. While this might seem like a fairly small difference in casting, I think there are some important implications.

While watching, I couldn’t help but feel like I did while watching Blade — it was uncomfortable to watch a group of white people seek a cure from a Black person’s body. It was nice when Dr. Caldwell admitted that Melanie was, indeed human, but I couldn’t separate myself from the current moment we’re living in. That scene hit me differently because I’m so aware of how many people are dehumanized because of the color of their skin. Again, I’m very aware that my watching this film in 2020 has probably affected my reading of the action of the story.

All in all, I enjoyed The Girl With All the Gifts. It was a fun ride and an interesting take on the zombie concept. I enjoy films that push a certain genre further, and I believe that’s exactly what this did. While there were some problematic moments, it’s one I think is well worth watching.