Tag Archives: zombies

The Girl With All The Gifts

I was really worried that this movie would be too scary for me, but its immediate familiarity reminded me that I’d read the book upon which it is based (by M.R. Carey), and knowing I’d survived the book meant I could surely handle the film as well.

Not for nothing: it’s about a “fungus” that’s extremely zombie-like in its presentation. Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton) is a teacher at a military-run school at Hotel Echo. Her “hungry students” are all infected with the fungus. Under heavy restraints, they aren’t just taught, but tested. Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is test subject #1. She’s a very sweet young girl until flesh is nearby, and then her jaws start chomping involuntarily.

When the base is suddenly overrun by hungries, Melanie escapes with the compassionate teacher as well as Dr. Caldwell (Glenn Close), the woman doing all the experiments, and just a few remaining soldiers. Because they’re low on blocker gel (the lotion that makes them less appetizing to hungries), they’re loathe to keep her so close by, but Dr. Caldwell is unwilling to let her best subject go. Melanie might be the key to an antidote.

Their small party need to make their way to the next safe spot, called Beacon, but getting there isn’t going to be easy. There’s some typical zombie movie gore, but this movie manages to be more by focusing on the relationship between student and teacher. And Melanie manages to be more than just a zombie, with her constant yearning to be fully human. Newcomer Sennia Nanua is very compelling in her role; Melanie is a monster, but Nanua gives her a sense of humanity that transforms this horror film into something more urgent, more terrifyingly relatable.

Director Colm McCarthy gives us some memorably startling images, even going so far as to shoot aerial footage over Chernobyl for an apocalyptic feel. The Girl With All The Gifts is not a traditional zombie movie, nor horror. It has a social conscience and some sound science, refreshing the genre with intelligence and dark humour. It’s not a perfect movie, it’s a little muddled, a little indefinite, but it’s a thought-provoking hybrid much like Melanie herself.

Beyond The Grave

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Beyond the Grave (Portos dos Mortos) is a post-apocalyptic indie sensation out of Brazil, where it successfully made the rounds of film festivals. It’s about a police officer looking for a serial killer, more or less. The catch: life is governed by magic and madness in this new reality. The serial killer is possessed. The cop is fueled by vengeance. This is not a tale of good vs. evil, but rather, the bad vs. the very bad.

The cop picks up a couple of teenagers on his travels – a risky thing to do, he knows. But they too are searching for someone who did them wrong. The cop isn’t much of a talker but luckily the boy can provide both sides of any conversation. And the bonus: the cop has a gun without bullets, and the kid has a lone bullet.

During their road trip they pass what look like zombies to me, but low-budget zombies you’d see trick-or-treating at your house come Halloween. It’s hard to embrace horror when the effects are too cumbersome to be scary. There are some genuinely interesting visuals here, most of them blood-soaked, but it’s not enough to make up a frustrating act in story-telling. The quiet serves the story well though, the audience learning much of what we know from a constantly cracking radio rather than any character.

I was a little upset, and by a little upset I mean and I was REALLY FUCKING UPSET when a zombie pulled out a gun. I mean, doesn’t that violate everything we know about zombies? And how do the zombies have guns when the cop’s is useless? I know I just mentioned two paragraphs ago that this post-apocalyptic world is governed by magic, I just didn’t expect the ‘magic’ to be ‘stupidity.’ My mistake.

So I lost interest in the movie quickly after this, especially when some super cheesy music was played over a montage where the teenagers learn to shoot a gun…that has no bullets.

So this movie is probably only to be enjoyed by those who really love zombie flicks – foreign, subtitled, low-budget, fantasy, road-tripping zombie movies with a western twist. Which I can’t say that I am.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

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I know exactly what is wrong with this movie: it deviates too much from Seth Grahame-Smith’s book – and for that matter, from Jane Austen’s.

Grahame-Smith’s novel was a clever and funny mash-up that clearly honoured its source material (credit to Quirk Books editor Jason Rekulak, who came up with the idea). Fans of Austen will follow along delightedly, finding all of their favourite bits suddenly transformed by the presence of the undead and the ninja Bennett sisters’ unparalleled fighting skills. It almost feels like untitled Austen left her novel wide open for a zombie attack, having an independent heroine spoiling for a fight and lots of solitary carriage rides through unpopulated areas.

Unfortunately, writer-director Burr Steers thought he knew better than both Grahame-Smith AND Austen, and departs from their material quite substantially. This from the esteemed writer of How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days.

The movie has glimpses of period drama and some real horror gore but has no idea how to unite the two. Instead, it drives toward an action flick, concocting very weird scenarios in which the zombies are not just a plague but a formidable, willful enemy. Lily James acquits herself well as the delightful maxresdefault Miss Bennett, and seems to remember that she’s supposed to be having fun. The movie, however, takes itself too seriously and winds up being ludicrous. All the juicy bits of Austen’s writing are MIA and the zombies lack bite (it’s rated PG-13) so it rather fails on both counts. The zombies keep looking for brains, but they won’t find any here.