You know how half the movies now are based on young adult novels about adolescent girls in post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the other half are about zombies? The Girl with All the Gifts is both! It’s a clever improvement on the genres, too—set several years after society was decimated by a cannibalism-inducing contagion, and focused on an infected child, Melanie (Sennia Nanua), who’s ravenous when she smells human flesh but perfectly ordinary when she doesn’t. Melanie, her sympathetic teacher (Gemma Arterton), an unsympathetic soldier (Paddy Considine), and an indifferent doctor (Glenn Close) must escape the “hungries” to find safety, leading us into familiar zombie territory—but the film consistently finds new ways to address familiar tropes with horror, humor, and humanity. (dir. Colm McCarthy; available digitally and on Blu-ray)
The Portland Mercury‘s Super Cinema Strikeforce™ had a bunch of other favorite movies in 2017, too! Check them all out here.