The Girl with All the Gifts

They are humanity’s last hope and at the same time a great danger. While much of the world’s population has been turned into flesh-hungry beasts by a fungal infection, some children have remained surprisingly normal. Do they carry the solution to the disease within them? dr Caldwell ( Glenn Close ) is adamant about it. And so she conducts a series of experiments on the children, while Sergeant Parks ( Paddy Considine ) takes care of security and Helen Justineau ( Gemma Arterton ) takes care of their education. When the base falls victim to an attack by the so-called Hungries, they try their luck together with the particularly intelligent girl Melanie ( Sennia Nanua) to break through and perhaps still save the world.

Zombies are part of the Fantasy Filmfest and postponements and price increases are part of major government projects – it just wouldn’t be the same without them. And yet The Girl with all the Gifts is certainly one of the most interesting representatives that we have seen there in recent years. But you could have figured out somewhere in advance that the horror flick would be a little different. A festival contribution that is then regularly shown in the cinema, with a prominent and genre-untypical cast, that sounds like a bit more.

And at least the beginning of the film keeps this promise. Young children muzzled and confined to wheelchairs à la Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is a disturbing sight. Likewise the combination of wild beast and articulate, hard-working students. The adaptation of Mike Carey’s novel of the same name is particularly exciting because the usual black and white division is blurred here. The story is about the struggle for survival between two parties. But why should one be eligible and the other not? Of course, other films have already tackled the humanization of zombies, such as Fido – Good dead people are hard to find or The Returned – Neither Zombies nor Humans. Here, however, the consequences of the considerations actually threaten to become unpleasant. At least for the human side.

The Girl with all the Gifts is only partially so thoughtful. Of course, the drama is also supposed to be a horror film and please the fans of this genre. He does, by and large. The unpredictability and semi-intelligence of the antagonists create a nice basic tension, which can also be increased if necessary. Sometimes in a purely audio-visual way – the dilapidated modern-day ruins overgrown with plants make a lot, and there is beautiful, eerie music. But it can also be a classic raid: Especially the zombie storm on the bastion that starts at the beginning and makes you wince at least.

• The Girl with All the Gifts