Butler's Cinema Scene

Sennia Nanua

“THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS”  My rating: B 

111 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The Holy Grail for the makers of cult films is to come up with an original twist on the zombie thriller.

Netflix has a real contender with its new comedy “The Santa Clarita Diet.”  Another, much more serious candidate is “The Girl with All the Gifts,” which provides a big dose of in-the-moment chills and splatter, but even more importantly builds its own satisfying mythology.

Colm McCarthy’s film (the unexpectedly thoughtful script is by Mike Carey, based on his novel) begins in an underground prison somewhere in Britain. Here unfailingly polite 10-year-olds are kept in cells, fed live worms and guarded by armed soldiers who each day cart them off to their classroom strapped into wheelchairs like mini Hannibal Lecters.

We’re introduced to this world through the experiences of Melanie (Sennia Nanua), a bright, thoughtful and eager-to-please child despite her status as  a prisoner.

Each day the kids are taught by Helen (Gemma Arteton), whose curriculum leans heavily on science, though as  a reward for hard work she reads to her captive students from the Greek legends.

Melanie really relates to those fables.  Especial the one about Pandora. And she likes to think of Helen as the mother she never knew.

Not everybody in this prison is so nice to the children. Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine) loudly refers to them as “freakin’ abortions” and warns his soldiers to never get too close. Meanwhile Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close) is vivisecting the youngsters one by one.

You see these kids, in the womb when the zombie apocalypse  hit, are half human and half “hungry” (that’s what the flesh-gnawing resurrected are called in this rendition).  They may represent mankind’s only chance for a vaccine to fight the fungoid disease that brought civilization to its knees a decade earlier.

Gemma Arteton, Paddy Considine

With their prison base overrun by hordes of fast-moving “hungries,”  the principal characters are on the run in a hostile countryside.

Melanie — the only surviving child — is handcuffed and fitted with a Lecter-ish plastic mask, lest she be unable to resist the tantalizing smell of nearby humanity.  As it turns out, her ability to move through the hungries unmolested makes her the group’s greatest asset.  Even surly Sgt. Parks finds he can trust her to go on recon missions and come back with useful information.

“The Girl with All the Gifts” works on several levels. It’s a solid zombie adventure. It offers a surprisingly detailed (given the film’s low-budget origins) and realistic look at what an overgrown London might look like after 10 years without human occupants.

And it works well emotionally, with a twisted but potent mother/child dynamic developing between Helen and Melanie.

Ultimately “Girl…” references not only numerous zombie films, but also “Mad Max  Beyond Thunderdome” with a tribe of feral children who may be the  hope for the future.

Or maybe not.

| Robert W. Butler