Movie Review: The Girl With All The Gifts

Director: Colm McCarthy

Writer: Mike Carey

Stars: Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close, Paddy Considine, Sennia Nanua

Verdict: You should see it

I suppose it’s only apropraite that from such a huge horror fan, my first review of a current release would be a horror film written on 1st October. Hm, how cliche. This film however is anything but. 

It was hard to decide how to open my review of The Girl With The Dragon… wait no, The Girl with All the Gifts, hereby to be referred to as TGWATG because typing is work I don’t care if I do this for free. The reason it was hard to decide how to begin it was because there’s so much to talk about with TGWATG, (see it works so smoothly). First off can I just say, leave it to the British to make a proper young-adult film. Young adult doesn’t mean 12 year-olds editor’s of The Hunger Games, zombies are actually meant to be fucking terrifying, not a gimmick, producers of The Scorch Trials. If one was to look at the back catalogue of director Colm McCarthy, the researcher would see a menagerie of high quality, visually interesting, and otherwise interesting television, such Hustle, Spooks, Ripper Street, Doctor Who, Endeavour, Sherlock, and my favourite series of Peaky Blinders. Indeed, he’s set to go back to television, currently working on the pre-production for made-for-tv Superman flick Krypton. Infact he seems like the perfect choice, the issue with later day superman movies has been that they fundamentally havn’t understood how to properly use the character’s it’s dealing with whilst aping after previous iterations. Now if there’s one thing I can say about TGWATG it’s that it understands the history of the sub-genre of zombie flicks whilst also doing something fresh, new, and exciting with it.

The film starts with a very striking sequence of our teenage main character, in some militaristic, metallic, and sickly green chamber being woken up, then proceeding to restrain herself, before being taken to a lesson in which she says, “but there isn’t anything bad here”. To say anything more about the plot would definitely be a spoiler. 

I went in actually with quite low expectations. Ever since Let the Right One In, we’ve seen a slew of lesser movies trying to do the same thing of taking a horror monster and making a drama about them, like Maggie, and TGWATG had all the hallmarks of one of those. I mean, all the best horror movies of latter days like The Babadook or It Follows are also dramas, they entice you in with dark character development so that you identify with them properly, and this film is luckily of that ilk, maybe not of that quality, but definitely of that type of movie, not the former type. 

The film is impeccably directed, most of the film takes place amongst green, red is on the other end of the colour wheel so blood really takes on a striking quality and fills out a rich colour palate. The director takes full advantage of this, with an orange jumper, or red doors, drawing your eyes to the important things. Speaking of blood, there’s actually a lot of proper body horror here, I mean zombies themselves I feel come from the body horror tradition of Videodrome, The Fly, or The Thing, but it doesn’t shy away from the realities of the situation in the way that the first The Hunger Games did. These effects are all done, for the most part, in camera with practical effects without cuts, and this isn’t for style I think, it’s to sell the moment. The biggest example is the climax to the first and best act which has one of the most exciting and riveting long take set pieces I’ve seen for a while, like it does one, and then immediately one ups it. It’s not style for style’s sake, these long takes are there so that you can see everything and believe it’s happening and it’s great, I love it. 

Now this is definitely not perfect. The score is really interesting, I liked it for the first 5 minutes, actually I loved it for the first 5 minutes, after which it got a bit irritating. The first act is by far the best and although the other two have their moments the horror elements take a back seat and it rides dangerously closely to a Maggie type thing, and the ending left a bad taste in my mouth, it might be meant to leave a bad taste, or the filmmakers might actually believe this is a proper resolution. There are clues that the filmmakers know but it’s ambiguous and I can’t tell if I like that or not. I mean the filmmakers would probably love that I’ve had this reaction to the ending, but it just irritated me a tad. 

The acting is lovely, Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Paddy Considine (Peaky Blinders, Macbeth, The World’s End), who I love, and the lead, Sennia Nanua, are all very good but can sometimes come across as a bit stock character. However, the real gem in the film is Gemma Arterton who up until now is best known for schlock like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Clash of the Titans, and Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig’s worst Bond movie, now I love me some schlock but like good schlock if such a thing exists. However, in this film, she is quite outstanding, has an air of the Emily Mortimer, (Hugo, The Newsroom) about her, she owns the screen whevever she’s on it but not by cutting an imposing figure, it’s through just being really really real. 

The Girl With All The Gifts (give me a break about the acronym thing it’s the conclusion) is an exciting step forward for the zombie sub genre and sets Colm McCarthey up perfectly to take his place amongst the league of great film directors who rose from impressive TV work like Ken Loach, (Kes, I, Daniel Blake, The Wind That Shakes the Barley), and Ben Wheatley, (Kill List, Sightseers, High-Rise), who actually also in his career made some episodes of Doctor Who. It’s really worth checking out if anything just so studios who seem obsessed with profit can see the success of an actual young adult Young Adult film.

Movie Review: Hugo

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: John Logan,  Brian Selznick

Stars: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Lee, Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Helen McCrory, Michael Stuhlbarg, Frances de la Tour, Richard Griffiths, Jude Law

Verdict: A beautiful family friendly treat

Hugo is an infamously family friendly (how often do you get to say that?) movie from the master of dark character studies Martin Scorsese, (Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street). It follows orphaned clock-making whizz kid Hugo Cabret with Asa Butterfield, (Ender’s Game, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) bringing to life the titular role. He steals from the wrong, old, curmudgeonly, embittered toy maker with a damaged heart of gold, Georges, played by the always mercurial and inimitable Ben Kingsley, (Gandhi, Schindler’s List, Sexy Beast), more than making up for Iron Man 3. Hugo lives in a train station patrolled by the warden, bought to life by Sacha Baron Cohen, (Borat, Les Misérables) in fine knockabout form. 

In fact the cast is star studded, and generally fantastic. Helen McCrory is an absolute standout, maybe the best performance in the movie, and it’s a travesty it’s really hard to find many credits for her beyond Draco Malfoy’s anonymous mother because she is a real talent. The cast is rounded out by; Chloë Grace Moretz, (Kick-Ass) doing her best ‘Chamber of Secrets‘ era Hermione Granger impression, Ray Winstone Ray-Winstone-ing, Emily Mortimer being at her most fabulous since The Newsroom, (and she’s normally pretty fabulous), Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour off doing their own little thing, fabulously, Michael Stuhlbarg bringing the same sense of childishness he did to A Serious Man but this time instead of a childish sense of impotence and naivety, he gives a sense of wonder and awe that matches the tone of the film perfectly, Jude Law as Hugo’s father doing that thing Jude Law does of just being really warm and likeable, when he’s not playing Dom Hemingway or Dan from Closer, and last but not least, Christopher Lee, who’s just, well, Christopher fucking Lee. 

It’s not like anyone thinks Martin Scorcese is a one trick pony, he’s pulled off fare that deviates from his usual tropes with period drama The Age of Innocence and Kundun which was scripted by Melissa Mathison of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The BFG fame. And Hugo is very, very well directed, it’s interesting how Martin Scorcese, who’s been making films for decades, makes a film about the origins of cinema whilst effectively mixing old and new techniques; such as tableaux vivants and long tracking shots, arranged by an oscar winning Robert Richardson, (Django Unchained, Natural Born Killers, The Aviator), mixed with colour correction and a sepia tinted, computer generated vision of Paris, which also won oscars for it’s visual effects team. These go together to create the mood of classical era cinema with a contemporary polish, including that sense of joy for and love of the medium from films like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and The Big Sleep, this is a joy which also infects the plot of the film and the viewer themselves. 

In the end that’s the joy of the film, the very tone of joy which leaps of the screen, and a heart warming story that’ll melt the iced over cynicism in anyone. The performances, the side stories of the side characters who inhabit the train station like it was their only home and existence which take on the form of something Chaplinesque. I shed a tear, and if you don’t you’re either a robot or really must have something against this film. The master that is Martin Scorcese adds another string to his bow with aplomb, and despite the classical sense the film has, shows he’s as burningly contemporary as Chris Nolan.