I am not a fan of zombie
movies. In fact I generally avoid them. Then 28 Days Later came along with a bit of a fresh take on the genre. And then Warm. And 2016 offered us the The Girl With All
The Gifts. So that’s three
British movies that to various degrees subvert the conventions.
Zombies don’t have to lurch. Zombies can be lovable. And Zombies might
be the only way forward. At least after a plague.
I have already had to
revise my similarly disdainful opinion of vampire movies after Let The Right One
In, Thirst, Only Lovers Left Alive and Byzantium, four
movies that asked ‘what might it actually be like to be a vampire?’ To be a 12 year old for 300
hundred years, slowly but inexorably out-living everyone who is close to
you? What if you hate being a vampire? What would it be like
to be married for 400 years to the same person? What would it be like to
be the mother of a teenage girl for centuries – and what would it be like to be
a teenage girl – forever?
Margot Adler once asked “what it would mean
to live a truly long life. How would that change one’s view of everything in
society? …What does one value more and what does one value less with a long
human life? Would we become bored? Would we become less compassionate? …Would
it increase of decrease our reverence for the planet?”
So it seems that some genre movie makers are asking new questions,
changing the p.o.v, turning the objects into subjects and extending the
boundaries of our empathy. Of course James Whale did that long ago
when he made Frankenstein, whose Creature was the very model of a modern male teenager,
suddenly finding himself inhabiting an unfamiliar and seemingly grotesque body,
spurting out in all directions, subject to powerful and unsociable urges and
wondering if he can possibly be lovable, be loved by his own
creator. We even saw the Creature learning to smoke a
cigarette. Frankenstein’s creation was only a monster because he
felt unloved.
And what about
zombies? We have had Sean of the Dead and Cockneys and Zombies of course, and they gave us some laughs as they fed on (or off)
the conventions rather than recasting them in any radical way. I think there are some other zombie movies that look from a fresh angle - but I haven't seen them. Maybe I should hit them down.
But what about The Girl With All
The Gifts? A
fungoid plague has devastated the human population turning them into ‘hungries’
– flesh eating zombies. We see children being taught by Miss
Justineau, (Gemma Arterton) in highly secure (but it seems not
secure enough) camp. She is slowly developing a bond with one of
the children, Melanie (played by Sennis Nanua). The children are treated
like Hannibal Lecter, restrained with thick leather straps and muzzled because
they are also infected and the smell of uninfected humankind drives them into a
frenzy of hunger for flesh. They are studied by Dr Caldwell
(Glen Close) who is looking for a cure, but making sure she does not get too
close, physically or emotionally – to the deadly children. They
are being taught by Miss Justineau, (Gemma Arterton – who also illuminated Neil
Jordan’s Byzantium) in an Army base. When the camp
is stormed and overrun by the adult zombies Caldwell and Justineau have to
flee, under the armed guard of Sgt. Parks (Paddy Considine) along with the
child Melanie, who is it seems, The Girl With All The Gifts.
As their situation
changes, so do their relationships. Caldwell had believed that
Melanie was not really human, an attitude that allowed her to be
objective and ruthless as she experimented on her cadre. But that
objectivity begins to soften on closer encounter. Sgt. Parks’
brusque suspicious attitudes also moderate as he recognizes and rather admires
the girl’s gifts and Justineau, who has always treated these young
zombies as children, begins to mother Melanie. This may or may not
be a good idea. Melanie may be brighter than the adults think, and
have different priorities. The young actress Nanua does a wonderful
job here, showing the child’s charm and vulnerability – and her coolly violent
capacities.
This is a serious movie,
adapted by Mike Carey from his own novel and filmed by Colm
McCarthy. It uses the genre
to look at the contrasting needs of the individual and the group, and the
abiding inquiry into ‘what does it really mean to be human?’ Science fiction movies have long
explored this latter question, from Metropolis through Blade Runner
to The Ghost in the
Shell movies.
We may hear another
question about the tension between teenagers and adults – teenagers who suspect
the restraints adults insist on imposing on them, adults who fear the
capacities of the younger generation. The future is another country; they do
things differently there.
During my years as a youth worker (and
parent) I began to see that adults are rather like mature frogs, looking at
tadpoles and refusing to recognise that we were ever once like that, a
selective amnesia that allows us to distance ourselves from and criticise them.
I have read statements of adult condemnation of teenagers and anxiety
about whatever future they might control. These statements can be
found all the way through our history. In this post-apocalyptic
movie there will be a new future, shaped and controlled by the children like
Melanie, and the adults will have to adapt to it.
This is not a horror
movies. It is properly thrilling at times, but never goes for schlock or gore.
The four main players work well together and the direction is pretty
taut. It does not end the way zombie movies have ended
in the past, and may well leave you with moral questions to ponder.
