The Girl with All the Gifts (2017)

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  TheMovieDiorama

  7 / 10

  The Girl With All The Gifts is a prime example why British zombie films are the best. When you compare something like 28 Days Later to World War Z, the former is head and shoulders above the latter. There is something about the backdrop of England (maybe because I live there) and a smaller budget that makes these films much more terrifying. In this iteration, a mutated fungal disease has turned the human race into flesh-eating...wait for it..."hungries". Some children are immune to it and are able to interact with the environment whilst still having the infection. So essentially half "hungry" and half human. Can they be trusted? That is the question. I really liked the atmosphere to this film, the aesthetic appeal felt like the video game The Last of Us. The production design of post-apocalyptic England looked great, the surge of environmental succession in urban settlements felt fitting. The makeup for the "hungries" was realistic...in a horrific kind of way. The cast was excellent, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close were all dependable and brought much needed humanisation to the story. Newcomer Sennia Nanua was able to hold her own against these experienced actors, I thought she performed well. The story in itself is basically survival. Both for the human race and Melanie's (Nanua's character) own future, so there is an internal conflict. Unfortunately, that conflict isn't well presented and I'm sure everyone who has seen it knows that the ending was...an interesting choice to say the least. I won't ruin it but a decision is made out of nowhere, it felt rather out of place. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. The script is concise, perhaps too concise to the point where our characters are considered monotonous. This is definitely more of a visual story, and the eerie musical score helps elevate the creep factor substantially. I found it to be hypnotic. This is a good little zombie flick that has excellent technical aspects, although the execution of the ending is questionable.

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