Wrath of the Little Match Girl

Wrath of the Little Match Girl is a 2024 British independent zombie horror-slasher film written and directed by Jamie Hickinbottom. The first installment of The Zombified Innocence Galaxy (ZIG), it reimagines Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 fairytale The Little Match Girl within a horror universe in which childhood characters are being corrupted and turned into murderers due to a zombie plague and stars Thea Evans as the title character, with Matthew Nurse, Arthur Redfern, Rubie-Mae Harvey, Jacob Murray, Jenson Parker, George Kulhanek, and Teresa Banham in supporting roles. It follows the Little Match Girl, who has become an immortal, vengeful zombie after freezing to death on the streets of Victorian England, as she spreads her zombie virus across modern-day Derbyshire and terrorising a group of students and their teachers as revenge for being left to die many years prior.
The film was first announced in August 2022, when it drew widespread attention for adapting a well-known public domain fairytale into a zombie horror film, and it was met with mixed-to-positive reactions. It was produced by Beaumont Leys School in association with West Gate School, making it the first film to entirely produced by a school instead of any kind of film studio, and went into development as Hickinbottom's submission to a performing arts contest at school. The film was shot for 21 days in Castleton, Derbyshire, with flashbacks being filmed in London.
Wrath of the Little Match Girl was originally scheduled for a direct-to-DVD release following its inital first screening at the Beaumont Leys School assembly hall, but a spike in the aforementioned online popularity promoted it to a major worldwide theatrical release. It premiered in the Netherlands on January 7, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States on February 14, 2024, and in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2024. The film divided critics, who praised the themes, direction, acting and intense atmosphere but criticised the script, lack of humor, runtime and pacing, but was acclaimed by general audiences and was a commercial success, grossing $11.3 million against a mere budget of $47,000. A sequel, titled Resurrection of the Little Match Girl, was released on December 12, 2024.