I may have only gradually become a fan of certain horror movies, but I have actually long enjoyed many horror novels. That included the 2014 book The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey. It was interesting and spooky, a different take on the zombie genre, and one of those books that convinced me I need to read more books by Mike Carey even if I rarely do for a wide variety of reasons. But the movie version? Even with Carey writing the screenplay and coming out within two years of the novel? No, I skipped it because, well, I wasn’t that much for horror movies then.
But I am more interested now, and it’s leaving HBO Max at the end of the month, a statement that I realize I have used many times, but it gets me to watch stuff I haven’t seen before, so no complaints from me.
Set in Britain after…something happened, we meet Melanie (newcomer Sennia Nanua). She’s a young girl who goes to school under unusual circumstances: she’s left alone in a locked cell when she’s not in class, she’s physically restrained when she does go, there are armed soldiers everywhere who seem to be afraid of her, and every so often, one of her classmates disappears without an explanation. See, there are these people called “the Hungries” that seem to exist, well, everywhere, and Melanie. They look mostly like people, but they just want to eat other people, and anyone not completely consumed turns into one very, very quickly. Basically, they’re zombies of the “fast” variety in that, when they get a scent for something to eat, they run. The Hungries soon overrun the army base/lab that Melanie is living in, and she’s soon on the run, looking for safety with her favorite teacher (Gemma Arterton), the only person who treats Melanie and her classmates like people and not monsters; two soldiers, a grizzled veteran (Paddy Considine) and a newer recruit (Fisayo Akinade); and the scientist (Glenn Close) doing experiments on the school children in an attempt to find a cure or a vaccine for the Hungries.
See, Melanie and her classmates aren’t ordinary children: they’re also Hungries, but a different sort of Hungry in that they can also think, talk, and reason. Why is that? That would be telling, but the movie does gradually build to that revelation very slowly.
“Gradually” might be a good way to describe this movie. It has a slow pace, but it’s an appropriate pace. Things happen, but it’s often quiet. The Hungries are individually not indestructible, and the nature of their zombie-condition shows them having some strange quirks. The movie does offer an explanation for their condition, and it plays out in the movie in a good manner, particularly the way the older zombies look compared to recent transformations. Sure, they all make noises that sound like something Frank Welker might have voiced in a cartoon, but that’s a minor complaint. There really is something going on with them other than mindless eating, even though they seem to do a lot of that, and Melanie is there to basically play translator to the surviving humans.
However, this is the sort of story where the point is to ask who the real monster is. Melanie is sweet and polite–most of the time–but she still needs to eat, and she isn’t above devouring a stray cat to keep her sanity, and Melanie isn’t exactly a neat eater. However, she does care for at least Arterton’s Miss Justineau, and she does bond at least a little with the other humans. That said, the humans aren’t exactly universally benevolent. Honestly? The most sympathetic character for me was a stray dog Melanie found and used as bait to lead a mob of Hungries away. I was seriously wondering what happened to that poor dog. Then again, maybe this wasn’t the sort of movie where you worry about the human or zombie characters, or maybe it was just that I remembered the ending, or maybe it was just the suggestion that this whole thing wasn’t about finding survivors as setting up something new. That was fine for what it was, and quite frankly, I think I preferred the novel.
Grade: B
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