‘It’s not over. It’s just not yours any more…’
It’s probably an unfortunate coincidence that M.R. Carey’s novel, The Girl with All the Gifts came out within a year of the now iconic video game The Last of Us. They both take place in a dystopian future in which most of humanity is wiped out by a zombie-like fungal infection. They both feature a young girl as a protagonist who potentially holds the key to immunity. They both explore the savagery of humanity in the face of extinction. And as with The Last of Us, they both struggle to break free from existing zombie movie tropes…
We begin in a secure military facility where Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) acts as a teacher to a class full of ‘hybrids’ – children who were born with the infection already raging inside them, but with the ability to act as normal children (until they start biting). Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is the most gifted of the children, and Dr Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close), the leader of the facility, believes that Melanie is the key to finding a cure to the infection. When the facility comes under attack, gruff soldier, Sergeant Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine), forms an unlikely allegiance with Helen, Melanie and Dr Caldwell in the outside world.
Director Colm McCarthy, working from Carey’s script, is adept at establishing the rules and lore of this universe, wasting very little time on world-building. Instead, we begin in media res with the full horror of the situation only revealed as the plot drives forward. To its credit, The Girl with All the Gifts only features the infected in short, violent bursts, instead focussing on the inevitable conflict between the disparate cast of characters that it has thrown together. Nanua is excellent as Melanie, capturing both her childlike naivety and her icy determination – it’s surprising that she hasn’t worked much since. The rest of the cast are less successful, with Arterton and Considine perhaps miscast, although Close is typically convincing.
While The Girl with All the Gifts is certainly competent and features flashes of real emotional resonance, it also borrows heavily from 28 Days Later, classic sci-fi movies and the work of Stephen King. It is also unfortunate that the TV adaptation of The Last of Us took this concept and created something infinitely more interesting.
