The Girl with All the Gifts. 2016. UK. Directed by Colm McCarthy. Screenplay by Mike Carey. With Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close and Sennia Nanua. DCP. 111 min.
Among the darker forms of fantasy, science fiction and horror often excel at using the apocalypse as a form of both entertainment and enlightenment. In this dystopian version of civilization’s decline, a parasitic fungus has led to a world overrun with “hungries”—the mindless afflicted who feed on any living thing that moves. Brought together by circumstance and desperation, an ensemble of battle-scarred soldiers, a hard-nosed scientist (Glenn Close), a compassionate school teacher, and a very special 10-year-old girl (Sennia Nanua) who holds the key to the future travel through the countryside to escape death-by-zombie and come up with a cure. Among the more thoughtful recent riffs on the walking dead, this genre hybrid proposes that perhaps the current model of humankind has no future, and maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. Perhaps it’s time to let a more intelligent, adaptable species carry on.