THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (2017) **

The Girl with All the Gifts is another one of those horror movies where everyone whispers for long periods of time and you have to continuously turn up the volume on your TV until a character slams a door shut and it’s so loud you think it’s going to blow out your speakers.  I mean what’s up with the sound engineers on these movies?  They don’t put a microphone anywhere near the actors’ mouths, but they’ll crank up the levels on a simple door latch?  

Speaking of the actors’ mouths, it’s also one of those movies where many of the actors have thick British accents and it’s hard to tell what the hell they’re saying.  It’s one thing if the sound sucks so you can’t hear them.  It’s another when you can’t even understand what they’re saying when their dialogue is properly recorded.

It’s also one of those movies where zombies move like they’re running in the Boston Marathon.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of these fast zombies.  Can we please go back to the old Romero zombies that do the Pittsburgh Shuffle?  Or if you’re going to have fast zombies, can you at least make sure the movie itself isn’t paced as slow as a Romero zombie’s gait?

The plot has a wicked government scientist played by Glenn Close… yes… THAT Glenn Close.  What the fuck is she doing here?  I guess the rent ain’t gonna pay itself.  Anyway, she’s in an underground military installation performing experiments on zombie kids.  One zombie girl (the one with all the gifts), played by Sennia Nanua is noticeably more human than the others and carries the gene that could cure the zombie plague.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Just when Glenn’s about to perform the experiment, zombies attack the compound.  Glenn, Gemma Arterton (who teaches Zombie Sunday School), and Paddy Considine (soldier) go on the run and look for a new home.  They bring the Gift Girl along, but wisely fit her with a Hannibal Lecter mask to prevent anyone from getting bit.  

After a sluggish start, The Girl with All the Gifts reveals itself not to be a total wash.  I liked some of the gimmicks, like the soldiers wearing a zombie repellent that looks like hand sanitizer.  (It probably has the same effect as Axe Body Spray.)  I just wish the action wasn’t so shoddily filmed and the CGI headshots didn’t look like a game of zombie paintball.

There’s still a great deal of stupidity here.  Take for example the scene when the zombies stand perfectly still, and our heroes cautiously tiptoe around them.  What?  Or when the fungus that caused the virus turns the zombies into trees.  I guess they were trying for a different take on the zombie flick, but that’s not exactly the way to go about it.  

The third act is marginally interesting.  It’s here where the flick becomes sort of like a Lord of the Flies, but with zombies.  A great movie could’ve begun with this idea.  This one ends with it.  

AKA:  The Last Girl.