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!

[REC]2: 25 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

By now, if you've read any of these little reviews, you should realize that I'm not terribly fond of the "found footage" genre of film making.  Generally, I find it to be a cheap way of telling a story that capitalizes on even cheaper thrillers and sudden jump cut editing.  I realize that there is a certain freedom that it allows to the filmmaker, to use said jump cuts for example, but something about that shaky camera style just does not do it for me.  However, every so often I see one of these films that either reaffirms my distaste, or surprises me in a good way.  Back in 2007, that film was Spanish made [REC], remade in America as the utterly forgettable Quarantine.  I enjoyed [REC] quite a bit and found it to be a very refreshing spin on the classic infection story.  Somehow, though, the sequels evaded me and when Paranormal Activity came out I decided I was completely done with "found footage" horror movies.  Luckily, a friend of mine refreshed the idea of [REC] and convinced me to take the time to watch the 2009 sequel [REC]2 which I finally, not so begrudgingly, have.

[REC]2 not only picks up on the tail of [REC] but shifts the genre in the most awesome way possible.  In the first film we are lead to believe that it is merely some crazy mutation of rabies that causes the outbreak of infected violent people in the apartment complex.  In the second film, we join an elite squad of SWAT type men who go into the building with a Doctor from the National Health Department.  We discover, after the first encounter with an infection victim, that things are not as they seem.  The Doctor is a Priest from the Vatican and the infection is in fact a mass Demonic Possession.  From there it's all about survival and finding the blood from Teresa Madeiros (the original possession victim) to attempt to synthesize an antidote.

WTF?  So, not only is this film a "zombie like" infection movie, it's also about demons.  Well who didn't invite me?  The film is like a modern, found footage, Demons, which to some may salt it's credibility as a horror film, but for me piques my interest intensely.  I have a soft spot for Euro Demon movies and man does this one deliver.  Blood vomiting, voice changing, levitation, frighteningly fast moments of violent frenzy; [REC]2 delivers and delivers until at the incredibly twisted climax you realize "There has got to be a third one of these coming soon."

The actors playing the squad are riff off of each other quite well and the opening scene in the van reminded me a little bit of the helicopter scene in Predator.  They do a good job of creating that sense of camaraderie that comes with working in a tight knit group.  The Doctor/Priest, played with an obsessive intensity by Jonathan D. Mellor, provides that motivation that drives the story towards it's incredibly edited (eat your heart out Paranormal Activity) and incredibly creepy ending.

Since, no movie seems to escape me unscathed, I do have to say that there are a few moments that are utterly cheese balled and pulled me out of the movie.  Luckily, the film still has so much going for it that it sucked me back in almost as fast as it took me out or this would have been a much more negative review and since I've already mentioned that I find the ending twisted, creepy, and incredibly edited, AKA really dang good, I guess it's time to watch the third one and see where it goes from there.

4 out of 5 skulls.