The Girl With All The Gifts: A Film With Not Much To Unwrap

  

Screenwriter M.R. Carey spares no time in plunging into this zombie-ridden post-apocalypse. Carey’s delightfully freakish twist is that his child protagonist, Melanie, is a ‘hungry’ (Carey’s byword for zombie) who maintains human intelligence. She resides on the last citadel of humanity, a bleak military base-cum-research facility, and is kept along with other children like herself to be studied and eventually chopped up by steely, no-nonsense scientist Dr Caldwell (Glenn Close).

Angel-faced Melanie and her friends attend school on the base. Their benevolent teacher, Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton), treats them with compassion unlike Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine) and his chums who refer to the children as “friggin' abortions”. The film opens as Justineau conducts an animated class reading of the ancient Greek myth, Pandora’s Box. Melanie’s eager hand-raising earns her an approving pat on the head from Justineau, a move that triggers the children’s feeding instincts. Dread drips over the scene when all the children begin lunging hungrily for Justineau; Melanie is the only one who holds back her flesh-craving ‘hungry’ urges. 

The somewhat predictable zombie-movie yarn is kept on course by its ticking-time-bomb plot. Caldwell is under pressure to create a zombie virus vaccine before it wipes out the few humans left. She is yet to be convinced that sacrificing Melanie and her friends is an unethical way to achieve it.

Philosophical interludes prevent the film’s drab military-base scenes from descending into full on dullsville. Caldwell visits Melanie’s dorm and leaves her with some bedtime brain-food in the form of the logic puzzle, ‘Schrödinger’s Cat'. It momentarily jolts some life into the film and stirs up some juicy questions: is Melanie simultaneously sentient and (un)dead or is she simply “mimicking human emotion” as Caldwell believes? Justineau and Caldwell are opposed on the matter but their arguments are neither noteworthy nor compelling. Unfortunately, the questions become background noise to the standard-issue zombie killing-sprees and supply-raid scenes that make up the bulk of screen time.

After the base is overrun by hungries the film begins its long shuffle towards a conclusion. Caldwell, Melanie, Justineau and Parks discover an abandoned research unit where Caldwell attempts to continue her research and inevitably dissect Melanie. Clever Melanie manages to escape after a dramatic tussle, and the film comes full circle with the aforementioned Pandora’s Box myth.

Clearly, Carey intends for Melanie, his eponymous girl with all the gifts, to be recognised as a Pandora figure and her final act analogous to that of Pandora opening her box. In this case, the symbolic unleashing of the world-ending horrors takes the form of setting piles of dead hungries alight to release their toxic pathogens into the air. Melanie and her fellow hybrids are the only ones who can survive in this environment and become free to inherit the earth, unopposed by the likes of Caldwell and Parks.

Miss Justineau is the only human left alive, safely quarantined in the research unit by her faithful star-pupil Melanie. But this reimagining of the story skips one vital element that the Pandora myth is known for: the prospect of hope. Without the metaphorical ‘butterfly’ of hope emerging from the ‘box’, there can be no future for this new generation of hybrid children. The film leaves off with a disappointing vision of a future where Melanie’s placid school teacher reads stories to her pupils forevermore.

Synopsis: In dystopian England a zombie virus has turned most of the population into flesh-eating ‘hungries’. A small number of children born to infected mothers maintain human intelligence but are instinctively compelled to eat living flesh.

Dr Caldwell, a scientist on a military base-cum-research facility outside of London, is attempting to create a cure for the virus. She believes the bodies and brains of the children hold the cure, particularly 10-year-old Melanie. The officers and researchers on the base treat the children with contempt, except for their teacher, Miss Justineau.

When the base is overrun by hungries, Dr Caldwell, Justineau, Sergeant Parks and Melanie are forced to flee in search of a safer location. Although Melanie is aware that her brain could be used to develop a cure for the virus once she is dead, she and Justineau vehemently defend her right to live.

After settling in a mobile laboratory in London, the group are slowly picked off by hungries. Caldwell dies from sepsis caused by hungry bites before she can create her cure. Melanie intentionally sets fire to piles of dead hungries so their toxins can spread and pollute the air, cementing the impossibility of humanity’s recovery. Inside the mobile laboratory where she is kept quarantined, Miss Justineau begins teaching Melanie and the other children from behind a protective glass window.

- S.M.V (written 2017)