Excellent but underrated film

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Take John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'The Midwich Cuckoos' and cross it with George A. Romero's 'Day of the Dead' and you end up with 'The Girl with All the Gifts'. Sounds fun right??? However this film takes itself way to seriously, to take any levity from people turning into mushrooms or tribes of feral, grunting 'Beyond the Thunderdome' 10 y'o's... running a mock in central London. The cinematography is flat, cheep and uninteresting, the music annoying and Paddy Considine is (as always) underused.With a better Director and Writer you could take M R Carey's Novel and turn it into something really interesting, fun and poignant. Sadly this falls way short.

When you compare something like 28 Days Later to World War Z, the former is head and shoulders above the latter. There is something about the backdrop of England (maybe because I live there) and a smaller budget that makes these films much more terrifying. In this iteration, a mutated fungal disease has turned the human race into flesh-eating...wait for it..."hungries". Some children are immune to it and are able to interact with the environment whilst still having the infection. So essentially half "hungry" and half human. Can they be trusted? That is the question. I really liked the atmosphere to this film, the aesthetic appeal felt like the video game The Last of Us. The production design of post-apocalyptic England looked great, the surge of environmental succession in urban settlements felt fitting. The makeup for the "hungries" was realistic...in a horrific kind of way. The cast was excellent, Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close were all dependable and brought much needed humanisation to the story. Newcomer Sennia Nanua was able to hold her own against these experienced actors, I thought she performed well. The story in itself is basically survival. Both for the human race and Melanie's (Nanua's character) own future, so there is an internal conflict. Unfortunately, that conflict isn't well presented and I'm sure everyone who has seen it knows that the ending was...an interesting choice to say the least. I won't ruin it but a decision is made out of nowhere, it felt rather out of place. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. The script is concise, perhaps too concise to the point where our characters are considered monotonous. This is definitely more of a visual story, and the eerie musical score helps elevate the creep factor substantially. I found it to be hypnotic. This is a good little zombie flick that has excellent technical aspects, although the execution of the ending is questionable.

First half of the movie is an effective setup for an interesting look at a zombie apocalypse. But sadly the writing quickly descends into stereotypical dumb horror movie tropes. Then it turns into an episode of the "The Tribe". I never knew it was possible for an actor to "grunt" unconvincingly, but that is on display here. A lot. Some great people in the cast (Close, Arterton and the mighty Considine) but sadly let down by a bad script. The last scene made me laugh out loud it was so cheesy.

I cannot help to think that anyone that has rated this 6 or above is a payed review or watched a different movie ... the entire plot is mediocre at best, dull, long, boring, accompanied by utter poor acting, honestly speaking 6.7/10 is an insult, the first 30 min are watchable ... but it takes a HUGE dive afterwards.