Midnight Madness
It’s a genuinely difficult thing to put a fresh spin on a genre that has been driven into the ground like a dead man walking but The Girl With All The Gifts allows the zombie genre to have some genuine heart and emotional drama without skimping on the gore.
Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is just your average little girl who likes to go to school, read and loves her teacher, Ms. Justineau (Gemma Arterton). However, Ms. Justineau teaches in a top secret military compound and Melanie is a rare hybrid human/flesh eating zombie who just might hold the key to save the world from the zombie apocalypse that is raging everywhere. This status quo doesn’t last long as their base is over run and a small group of survivors along with Melanie are on the run from ‘The Hungries’ who only want to feed.
It’s a rare thing as we see a zombie be a compelling and sympathetic character but in Colm McCarthy’s The Girl With All The Gifts we get exactly that as young Sennia Nanua carries the affair as the precocious Melanie. It doesn’t go overboard with the zombie tropes and allows for genuine character development throughout as the ensemble totally buys into the emotional nature of the piece. It’s not a movie about surviving the zombie apocalypse but rather how this little girl that we are instinctively terrified of also makes us feel for her.
It’s genre wrapped in character drama in all the right ways.
David Voigt is a Toronto based writer with a problem and a passion for the moving image and all things cinema. Having moved from production to the critical side of the aisle for well over 15 years now at outlets like Examiner.com, Criticize This, Dork Shelf (Now That Shelf), and to.Night Newspaper.
He’s been all across the continent; serving on the FIPRESCI Jury at the Festival Du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, covering festivals out side of Toronto like Calgary Underground Film Festival, CUFF Docs, Slamdance, Fantasia, SXSW, DOC NYC, Santa Barbara Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival and many others
However, In the uncertain world of modern film journalism, David also knew that he needed to have a hand in writing and cementing his own contributions on the global film scene.
Having eclipsed the 10 year anniversary of his own outlet, In The Seats, where he’s been striving to support film (and TV) from all walks of life and his podcast “In The Seats With…” where after 5 & ½ years and over 750 episodes he’s talked with a wide variety of filmmakers, actors, behind the scenes artisans and so much more on the art of storytelling for the screen, which is spawning the launch of a new show in the Spring of 2026. “ITS: Soundtracks” will focus on the use of soundtrack and score in film which he believes is a combination that is the cinematic equivalent of Peanut Butter and Chocolate.
All this as well as hosting and moderating a variety of big screen events around the city, covering film in all its forms is just a way of life for him.
