The Girl with All the Gifts

[3.5 stars] [IMDb Link]

[Amazon Link]
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One last movie for 2019, watched while waiting for the ball to drop. It's pretty good, for a zombie movie. It appears not to have been widely released to US theaters for some reason.

I'd read the book on which it was based back in 2015, and… hey, I'll just steal a bit from what I said then, only minor spoilers:

Melanie is a smart kid in an unusual situation: she goes to school with her classmates, but that involves a couple of armed soldiers coming to get her in her cell. One holds a gun on her while the other puts her into a wheelchair with strong restraints on her arms, legs, and head. All indications are that the soldiers view her and her ilk with a mixture of fear and loathing. But she has a sympathetic teacher, Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton, who played Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace!). And there's a very creepy lady scientist, Dr. Caldwell, played by Glenn Close. Pretty clearly she views the kids much like lab rats.

So she's in some sort of prison/lab. And all indications are that the outside world is … not well. The situation can't go on forever, and it doesn't.

This seems to be a big-budget movie, special effects are impressive. (According to Wikipedia (small spoiler) "Aerial views of a deserted London were filmed with drones in the abandoned Ukrainian town of Pripyat, which has been uninhabited since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster."


Last Modified 2024-01-23 3:14 PM EDT