Colm McCarthy
It is easy to see how The Girl With All The Gifts could have been toned down and transformed into a generic YA movie in its cinematic adaptation. In the 2014 best-selling novel, the story is told from the point of view of all five central character. Here, director Colm McCarthy focuses on the titular tween character Melanie, exploring this plague-ravaged world from her point of view.
It would be easy to accuse The Girl with All the Gifts of being a fad product. It’s set in a dystopian future, it’s got zombies, and there’s even a chosen one-esque girl at its center. It all seems dreadfully familiar, but a bit of digging reveals that this project is anything but a studio rummaging for profit.