The Girl with All the Gifts: A Zombie Movie That Asks Big Questions (Movie Review)

The movie The Girl with All the Gifts (2016) is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by M.R. Carey, published in June 2014 by Orbit Books.

In most zombie fiction, people who are infected become flesh-eating monsters, and there is no turning back. In many movies, we see people searching for a cure, but none are ever successful. After the zombie infection, there is no way that the story can have a different ending.

However, some works of fiction offer a different perspective. In the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, the protagonist, Robert Neville, is the last one of his kind. A pandemic has turned everyone else into vampires (mostly they are like zombie-vampires). But after a while, Neville discovers that some of the infected have built their own society.

"The Girl with All the Gifts" and "I Am Legend" are two examples of zombie fiction that offer a more hopeful message. They suggest that even in the darkest of times, there is always hope for a new beginning.

In the movie, The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), a fungal infection turned people into fast, mindless flesh-eating creatures called "hungries." However, the infection has other stages, and a new generation of "hungries" is different. These hybrid children still crave living flesh, but they can think and are intelligent. A small group of scientists and soldiers are trying to use these children to find a cure.

The smartest child in this group, who is both human and zombie, is Melanie. She soon discovers that no matter what humans do, their end is inevitable. The new, thinking, and learning zombie species will replace humanity.