12 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

It's not very often that I get to review something before it has a full on theatrical run, or worse, before it's already on home video markets.  Often when I go to the movies these days I'm not even going to newer films.  I'm usually watching retrospectives of the great directors I admire instead.  However, on the closing night of Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theatre I finally got to treat myself to something new and it may be the greatest "neo-zombie" film to date.  I'm talking, of course, about Colm Macarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts.

Adapted from the novel by the author, Mike Carey (who also wrote the screenplay), the film is set in a post apocalyptic England.  The girl in question, is Melanie (new comer Sennia Nanua) a precocious child who is strapped, arms, feet, and head into wheelchair every day by English soldiers and put through an education with a number of others like her.  She is eager to learn and has a fondness and bond towards her teacher, Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton), but for all her innocence she is still, technically, a monster.  When the base in which she lives is overtaken by "Hungry's" she escapes with Justineau and a small team of survivors including Sgt. Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine) and Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) into a ravaged London to reconnect with other survivors.

What makes The Girl With All The Gifts so remarkable is that, in essence, it is a story about survival but it nuances and blurs the lines between right and wrong.  It's a zombie film that, like any truly great zombie film, doesn't focus on the what or the why, but what it means to survive and what it means to be human.  Girl takes it a step forward by questions the latter even more directly and it also has an unapologetic answer to the seeming death of mankind as it was, but you'll have to see it for yourself to get that answer.  Sennia Nanua is a breath of fresh air as Melanie and she both embraces and emboldens the coming of age aspects of the story to perfection.

Another lovely aspect of the film was the amount of production design that went into it.  While some of the larger scenes do rely somewhat heavily on CGI (to show the scope of the post-infection London) there are a number of gorgeously designed set pieces as well that give the film that full dimensional feeling often lost in large CGI spectacles.  Beautiful and suspenseful camera work keeps the audience on edge often, a few scenes eliciting vocal responses as the screening I went to, often times putting even the most intense moments of The Walking Dead to shame.  The rest of the cast are fully fleshed out dynamic characters, which speaks volumes to the writing.  It's not often in horror that you get to see subtle changes or growth, especially in modern horror, but that's the cornerstone of this film and it does it to perfection.  While you can probably see it on V.O.D. soon, I highly recommend going to the theatre for this one.  The sheer scope of the film is just gorgeous on the big screen!

New Belgium Cinema

I'm always looking for films that I can't describe after seeing.  The type of films that just strike you someplace deep in your chest or in your mind, igniting the fibers and sinews of emotion within your soul.  It shouldn't be too surprising that I found this with The Kid With A Bike the new Dardenne Brothers film.

Thematically, the story is about growing up with the psychic wound of abandonment.  The main character, Cyril (played by new comer Tomas Doret) has been abandoned to a country run children's home, like an orphanage intended to be a halfway towards foster families.  Refusing to believe that his father would abandon him, he attempts to escape from the house and find his father, only to discover that the adults had been telling him the truth.  Upon his capture in a medical clinic he becomes bound by fate to Samantha, a hair dresser (played by the wonderfully natural Cécile de France).  Samantha becomes increasingly attached to Cyril, first out of pity, and second out of honest love.

The wounds of abandonment are hard felt and Cyril is definitely damaged by them.  Psychologically speaking, he cannot reconcile his trauma and acts out in increasingly difficult and vicious ways, seeking love in all the wrong places regardless of the fact that it's been right in front of him all along.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's previous works include the Palmé d'Or winning Rosetta and L'Enfant as well as many others, and they have been working together for the past 37 years.  Their style is very influenced by documentary film making, where they got their start, and their stories tend to be about young people in dire situations.  They generally eschew music, with the exception of diegetic (motivated by the scene, i.e. a car radio, boom box, or television), although Kid is the first to feature a piece of non-diegetic music, a Beethoven piano concerto.  While many of their films do not contain happy or uplifting endings (they are certainly more interested in realism) they focus on the transitory nature of emotion and mental maturity.

I will end on a non spoiler note, that The Kid With A Bike is probably one of their most accessible films to date, in terms of a wider audience appeal.  I watched it with a few friends at The Aero in Santa Monica, CA followed by a Q/A with the Dardenne Brothers and I think it's safe to say that everyone in the theater left with the elation of seeing a film that left a feeling inside them that is difficult, if not impossible, to describe with words.

The film should hit theaters in Los Angeles in March, hopefully a wider release is to come, and it has also been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.