Review of The Girl with All the Gifts (2016) by Nell A — 08 Feb 2017

I struggle to understand why this movie is so incredibly highly rated. Honestly as a fan of the zombie genre, it felt like a zombie movie for people who don't like zombie movies. Its pseudo-scientific "primal" pretentiousness would indeed be a different take on this usually violent sub-genre, if it weren't for all the holes in the plot.

One minute, a fart sets off "the hungry", the next minute you can walk by with a radio blasting and they ignore you. The zombie apocalypse supposedly happened 7 years ago (judging from the z-kids ages) however there is somehow still animal and plant life, even though it is made very clear that the hungry are the vast majority and they also eat non-human animals (I hate it when horror movies rely on killing cats and dogs for shock factor - it's getting old, call me when you can make killing a cow look just as horrible and sad).

The start of the movie is incredibly slow, too. Why the unborn children of pregnant women who are infected, are only half zombie, makes no scientific, biological sense. And oy with the Lost Boys. It took me effort to get through this movie.

The movie doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be; it's not survival, it's not science, it's not psychological - none of the themes that would make sense in an apocalyptic scenario are actually explored.

I would not watch it again.