Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
In the future, a strange fungus has changed nearly everyone into thoughtless, flesh-eating monsters. When a scientist and a teacher find a girl who seems to be immune to the fungus, they all begin a journey to save humanity.
The Girl with All the Gifts is a competent and reasonably engaging zombie-fungus thriller elevated above genre average by a genuinely striking and thematically rich ending that subverts the usual 'save humanity' resolution. Melanie's arc concludes on an unsettling, morally complex note that few genre films dare attempt. The plot follows familiar post-apocalyptic beats otherwise, drawing heavily on The Last of Us and Cordyceps-fungus territory. Acting is solid — Sennia Nanua is a standout discovery — but the supporting cast is serviceable rather than exceptional. Cinematography is functional and grim, capturing the desolate UK landscape adequately without any particularly memorable visual invention. Novelty is moderate: the second-generation hybrid child angle and the ending's radical inversion give it a distinct identity within the genre, though the overall conception feels derivative of established zombie lore.