You are listening to Zombie Strains. I'm John, and with me is my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. We're horror movie fans living in what appears to be a zombie world. According to Wikipedia, over 600 zombie films have been released since 1932. And of those 600, 400 of them have come out just this century. Why is that? To answer this question, we're going to follow the shambling zombie path from the beginning, one movie at a time. Welcome to Zombie Strains. Now, in our first two episodes, we are setting a baseline for the series. Andy and I each selected a film we feel depicts our current understanding of zombie movies. And then in subsequent episodes, we're going to start at the very beginning of zombie movie history and work our way forward to the modern day, with a few fun detours to keep things interesting. So in any case, I got to pick first last time. That was our first episode. I picked Dawn of the Dead by Zack Snyder. What do you have for us today, Andy?

John, on the plate for today is The Girl with All the Gifts, a zombie movie from 2017.

Not to spoil it, but I picked the paint by numbers, sort of generic zombie movie, and you picked this movie, and I started watching and I was like, Andy, you show off. Like, this is so much better than Dawn of the Dead. Sorry to make value judgments right out of the gate, but I really liked this movie a lot.

Well, good, yeah, I guess this is as good a time as any to explain why I picked it. It wasn't just to show off because I like a good trashy zombie movie, and we'll be watching plenty of those. But I picked this movie mostly because it just represents a really different take on the zombie film than Dawn of the Dead. This movie takes place a long time after the zombie uprising, and humans have already learned strategies to cope and adapt. And so the stakes are more zoomed out and they're broader. It's more like, what can we do to preserve the future of humanity versus can we survive this night? Right?

Yes. Yeah.

It's also, I'm not saying this movie is super deep, but it is a movie that kind of asks big questions that are pretty hard to ask in a movie about surviving the night. Right?

Yeah.

And to me, this connects the zombie genre to the sci-fi. It leans in a sci-fi direction or maybe speculative fiction is maybe the better term for it. It's just asking the sorts of big questions that you might normally expect in a good sci-fi-ish type of movie. And I think that's part of the DNA of the zombie genre. And so I just wanted to pick a movie that kind of went in that direction. And I guess, lastly, one of my hypotheses with this podcast, we'll see if it turns out to be true or not, is that the quality of a zombie movie is pretty unrelated to its budget. This is just a hypothesis. So these are rounded numbers, but this movie cost about $5 million to make. Dawn of the Dead cost about $26 million to make.

Right, and Dawn of the Dead was a full decade earlier, too.

Yes. Yeah, that's not with accounting for inflation or whatever. So that's not to say that Dawn of the Dead is a bad movie, but I think this movie, I think we're going to agree that this movie is pretty effective with like 20% of the budget of Dawn of the Dead. So I guess we'll see. Let's go ahead and jump in. First, I want to provide a general content warning. We're talking about zombie movies. Most of these are R rated, and they have a lot of zombie gore. So we're not going to call it every instance of violence or grossness. This movie does have some pregnancy horror. So if that's upsetting to you, maybe listen with caution. And with that, I want to turn it over to producer Brad to give us a quick rundown on the basics of this film.

So this movie opened in limited release in the US on February 24th, 2017. It was so limited that I can't find any box office results for it. It did go to DVD and Blu-ray in April of 2017. It was released worldwide in 2016, and it made about $4.8 million outside the US. The film was directed by Colin McCarthy. It's his feature debut. It was written by Mike Carey, who also wrote the novel at the same time he was writing the screenplay for this. The film's cast includes newcomer Cynia Nannua, Patty Considine, who you've seen from House of Dragons, Gemma Arderton, who we've seen in Quantum of Solace, and Glenn Close.

It's a pretty strong cast, to be honest. And this newcomer, a Cyan- excuse me, it's Cynia, S-E-N-N-I-A, Cynia, is amazing, and we'll get to her performance, I'm sure. But can I just ask a question? I just, how am I just realizing for the first time that Glenn Close's name is Glenn? Like, what is, is that short for something? Or did her parents just name her Glenn? Or is that her stage name? Like, I've known her, I've watched her movies for 40 years, this is just occurring to me now.

What did you think her name was before today?

I just always called her Glenn Close. Like, it didn't occur to me that her first name was Glenn, like Glenn Campbell, right? It's spelled the same. Like, that just seemed a little strange to me. I don't know why.

Well, I think you'll need to maybe take some time to yourself to work out what's going on with your brain.

We'll talk through that in a post show. Let's talk a little bit about the cultural context of this film. It's pretty recent, right? So, assuming it was shot in 2015, 2016, we are, I think, at the beginning of a sort of conservative reaction to events in the world, the big thing in the world that is happening is there's a lot of unrest in the Middle East, which is producing a lot of refugees and a refugee crisis. And shortly after that crisis, probably while this film is being made, or certainly while it's being released, Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister of the UK. This is a UK film. Donald Trump becomes President of the United States. And there is a sort of conservative wave, a sort of anti-immigration wave sweeping Europe at this time. So I don't want to say that every movie is a direct response to the literal facts of the time, but certainly a zombie movie must absorb some of that. So we'll talk about it as we go through.

Yeah, I wanted to say also, I guess I'm going to kind of spoil some of our later discussion here, but the zombie menace in this movie is the fungus that functions like the zombie ant fungus. I was just curious. So I think this was just in the zeitgeist when this story was written. The book and story were written around like 2012-ish, and so I went to Google Trends and looked up to check the history of Google searches for zombie ant fungus, and there was this huge spike in 2011. So I think probably the video game Last of Us was not out yet, but it was probably in the news at that time, and that is famously about a fungus zombie.

I feel like that after 2012, we are in the alternate origins for zombies phase, and fungus is definitely the new virus, right?

Yes. So it spiked. So everyone was talking about this. I don't know if there's a viral meme about zombie fungus or something like that, but it seized the world's imagination briefly in 2011.

Well, I think we're ready to go. You want to start us off?

We start out in a kind of dystopian sort of setting. We start the film, and we are in a very Spartan jail cell in a dystopian underground complex of some sort. And we meet a young girl who's going to be the heroine of this movie. Her name is Melanie. And Melanie, along with a bunch of other kids, seem to be, they're imprisoned down here. And they are overseen by armed guards who come in periodically, acting very afraid and fearful and hateful towards the kids.

Yes. He calls them Kujo at one point.

Yes. So all of the overseers of this prison seem to really hate and fear these kids. And when they move the kids around, for instance, to like a classroom for their school, the kids are all strapped into chairs that restrain their heads and their arms. So John, what do we learn about Melanie? Like what kind of a kid is Melanie here?

The first thing that jumped out at me about Melanie is she couldn't be sweeter. She almost seems like they set it up really well. She couldn't be nicer and more polite. Like, hello private so-and-so, hello Sergeant Parks. Hello, good morning. Good morning. Good to see you. And they're always like, shut up. Like they're so mean to her and it doesn't seem to bother her at all.

I hated these soldiers so much.

Immediately.

I hated them so much. Yes. And they do have, we'll all meet a bad end written all over them, by the way, because that's just how these movies work.

Yes. Absolutely.

So, but there is one person in this facility that treats the kids, Melanie and the other kids, with kindness. And that is their teacher, who's going to be another one of the protagonists here. Helen Justineau, played by Gemma. What's the actress here? Gemma. Yeah. So Gemma is teaching these kids, they're all strapped to their wheelchair. And it's suggested that this has been going on for a long time. Right? And Gemma seems to be, or Justineau seems to be the only one that's taking this seriously and treating these kids as worth investing in education. And it's in this sequence, we see a couple of rounds of like going to school, each going to the classroom each day. And in one of them, there's I think a pretty thematically important conversation that Justineau has with Melanie, where they are going over the story of Pandora's Box.

Yes.

And that's going to be a theme that gets repeated throughout the film. So I imagine you know the story of Pandora's Box, but the quick version is this woman opens a box that she's not supposed to open and unleashes into the world all like disease and violence and every evil. But she also finds hope. Hope is also released by the box.

It's the last thing that comes out of the box in the story.

Exactly. So this is as good a time as I need to talk about the title of this movie. John, what did you make of the title of this film?

I didn't understand it. It was The Girl with All the Gifts, and I was waiting for her to become super powered. So then I assumed it was some illusion that I didn't get to literature.

That's exactly what I thought too. I was waiting for her to develop mutant powers or something.

Yeah, exactly.

So The Girl with All the Gifts is a clunky literal translation of the name Pandora. Pan for every, Dora for gift. So the movie is not really subtle about this, but we are primed to see Melanie as a Pandora figure.

Could we say that it's subtle for a zombie movie? I don't want to slag our target audience here, but yeah, zombie movies aren't generally, see our last episode known for their subtlety and nuance. Yeah. So I find it kind of artful. I don't mind a heavy-handed metaphor if it's evocative.

Right. So the other thing we learn from these scenes of these kids being wheeled in and out of the classroom and yelled out by the guards, is we learned something pretty important about them. And John, do you want to describe what we learn about Melanie and these other kids?

So as noted, the kids are all restrained, arms, legs, heads strapped, so they can barely turn their heads, they can't move their arms in this classroom. And the teacher, however, makes a decision, let's free their writing hand and let them write stories. So they write these stories, and Melanie writes this lovely story basically about her and the teacher going off together and being happy. And Ms. Justineau, the teacher, is so moved by this, she puts her hand on Melanie's head, and as she does this, Sergeant Parks comes in, Patty Constantine, and he's like, did you touch her? He is freaking out. And he's like, do I have to remind you? And what he does is he spits on his arm and sticks it under the nose of one of the kids. And you see this horrifying transition of all the kids as they sort of, it's the first time you see them as anything but sweet kids. They start like clashing their teeth together and reaching out for him. And, you know, you find out in this scene that human bodily fluids activate these zombie creatures and turn them into sort of feral animals that will do not, you know, think of nothing but eating you basically. And that they also have this gel, this stuff called blocker gel, which hides their scent, which they can use to sort of deactivate the zombies in limited ways.

So Melanie alone among the kids, Melanie seems to have a better ability to restrain that impulse to kind of turn feral. Yes. Although we learn in a scene just shortly after this one that she can't stop it completely. She too can be driven into like feral zombie mode. So basically we have a room full of, you know, maybe half zombie kids. We don't really know what the term is for these kids. But they're people that are able to function as regular humans. Right. When the right stimuli are present, like the presence of a tasty looking human, they can revert to zombie mode.

And I think it's also important to point out that we run into the doctor who's running this place during this sequence. Do you want to tell us about her?

Yeah. So this goes on for a while. And a couple of things happen, you know, that we kind of take note of. It's clear that Justin O has kind of a special attachment to Melanie. And it's also clear that something, maybe sinister, is going on. At one point, they roll into the classroom, and one of the kids is just gone. No one will answer questions about what happened to the kid, right? So something's going on. And this intro part of the movie kind of ends when security comes in one morning. But instead of wheeling Melanie to a classroom, they take her up to the surface. And it's sort of suggested that maybe this is the first time she's been out of this dank basement, because she's confused by what an elevator is. But regardless, they wheel her out, and we learn that we're on an army base, basically. It's fenced in, and outside the fence, the base is surrounded by zombies that seem to be just sort of perpetually swarming the base. And they wheel Melanie through, and into a sort of science lab type of building, where we meet one of the other main characters in the movie. This is Dr. Caldwell, played by Glenn Close.

Yeah, and we had met her before. She did stop by Melanie's cell at one point.

Yes, we've seen her briefly once or twice, and she's a little... At this point, we don't really have a good bead on what her deal is.

She provides the skepticism that these sort of half zombies are human at all, right? She's skeptical.

So she seems to be... She's not as abusive as the soldiers are, but unlike Justin, she's also not really willing to treat these kids as real human beings, right? So, and this lab is pretty ominous. There's like jars with brains in them, and it seems pretty clear from the context that they are basically cutting up the zombie kids in here and doing experiments. And so they're getting ready to do an ominous looking procedure on Melanie. At this point, though, Jocino bursts into the lab and begins arguing with Caldwell. And as they argue, we get a clearer description of what's going on with these weird kids.

We are so close.

This isn't what I signed up for.

It is exactly what you signed up for.

We're cutting up children.

They present as children. You know my opinion on that.

But the pathogen, the fungus, does their thinking for them.

We spoiled this for you, dear listeners, at the beginning of the episode. But here is where we first learn what is the deal with the zombies in this movie. It is a fungus. We'll get more detail as the movie goes on.

So can I insert something I've been thinking about since we recorded our first episode, which is not to be too existential, but what is a zombie? The idea of the zombie movie in general, there's a lot of ideas, but one of them is that zombies are these feral creatures who attack humans without quarter or without regard to their own safety. And my first thought was like it reduces people to their primal instincts. And then I thought, no, that's not correct, right? Even the most savage animal, the most savage predator has a survival instinct, right? So even a polar bear will not attack another creature that it knows it can't take, right? If it is hungry. Like I remember a documentary about a polar bear who does attack a walrus, and the walrus slaps it down hard and the bear wanders off. It doesn't come back and like relentlessly attack the walrus, right? It stops knowing it was defeated. Zombies don't do that. They have no preservation instinct at all. So they're not even animals in a sense. And I think this movie is asking the same question, which is why I bring it up now. What are these creatures?

I think so too. And I also think we're in this movie, we are about to get our first zombie bite, and we'll see what this looks like. But this is a different kind of zombie than like your Dawn of the Dead type zombie, right? It's not clear that the people die, and then they're not dying and coming back to life.

No.

It's they're being infected by something that takes over their brains and bodies. And to me, that adds like that extra horror. There's always that scene in zombie movies where people try to figure out if there's anything left of the people they love inside there, right?

Right.

But in this movie, I think that there is something left of the people inside. I think, you know, I think part of the horror is maybe the thought that like while you're alive and God forbid, maybe even conscious, something else is just completely takes over and dictates what you do.

Agreed.

So they're kind of still in the course of this argument. Security busts in and they're going to haul Justin Oh out. And then an alarm goes off. And this is the part in every zombie movie where things kind of are falling apart. You hear this alarm clock going off on the base. It sounds pretty ominous. And this is where we get our first zombie attack. It's a nicely framed scene. The assistant doctor, who, by the way, deserves what she's about to get because she is one of the mean people, is standing by the window of the lab. And they do that classic horror thing. You can see behind her that zombies are sprinting. Yes, these are sprinting zombies. Zombies are sprinting towards the window, and she doesn't notice us until they crash through. They grab her, they bite her, and she turns in seconds. Any thoughts on this turning scene, John?

You know, I was always kind of frustrated by the quick turn, right? But as you point out, they don't die, right? So in Dawn of the Dead, they had to die all the way and then come back. They had to bleed to death. Here, it's just an infection that takes over very quickly. Again, that doesn't feel realistic, but I think they handle it pretty well here.

And so, you know, pandemonium ensues. But like, interestingly, this is important for the rest of the movie.

So can I just raise one point, though?

Yes.

We are in England, and this base is protected by Chainlink Fence. Of all the countries in the world that have castles, why would they have a castle?

Yeah, why are we? There are moats. There are... We have choices here, yeah. It's a flat piece of land with the two lines of fence around it. That's a good point.

I think this movie does raise some questions about how smart the humans' defensive strategies are, but yes. Yeah, so it's... So, pandemonium ensues. Everybody's running away. Interestingly, this zombie doesn't attack Melanie, who's still strapped to the table. And the implication is that she recognizes that Melanie is a fellow infected, right? And that's going to be important throughout the rest of the movie, obviously. Yeah. So Melanie escapes and heads outside. And this is a... I love this kind of scene. It's like a total chaos scene.

Yes.

The camera pans around, and the zombies have broken down the fence and have invaded the compound. And people are running every which way.

The guards are trying to shoot them.

Yep. Trucks are driving around hitting people. It's like... It's a great scene. It reminds me... Donald the Dead did this really well with the neighborhood pandemonium scene or whatever.

Very similar. Yep.

Melanie sees two soldiers attacking or they're dragging Justin O off. And did you recognize one of these soldiers, John the Woman?

No, I didn't.

This is Dominique Tipper, who was Naomi in The Expanse.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I was bummed because when she first showed up as a guard in this movie, I thought she would be a hero. She's a great actress. But no, she is not long for this world. When Melanie sees the guards mistreating Justin, she runs and she attacks them.

And she kills them.

Yeah, it's full on. She jumps on them and drags them down and bites them. Zombie bites them to death.

And you know what? What is interesting here is the inciting incident is that soldier smacking Justin across the face with the butt of a rifle, and Justin falling unconscious. So she does not see Melanie do this.

And so, you know, long story short, they get into a military truck and escape the compound. So a couple of survivors basically make it to a truck. So Melanie and Justin get into this truck, and in the truck are Dr. Caldwell, who was the scientist who's doing experiments on the zombies. And so is Sergeant Parks, the super mean soldier. And then two, I mean, I'll just call him Red Shirts, right? Two soldiers, one of them will die on us pretty quickly. The other one has a name I remember, so he makes it to the end of the baby.

Yeah, Kieran, he does make it to the thing, and there's some wonderful bits with him, actually.

Yeah, so they get outside the compound, and then they stop to consult about what they're going to do. And this is where Melanie kind of confesses, tries to explain to Justin O what she has just done.

Are you okay? I did something bad. You did a good thing. You saved me like in your story. It wasn't like my story.

I ate bits of the soldiers.

The girl in my story didn't eat people.

So Melanie has a conflict about who she is. She did attack the soldiers because they were attacking Justin O, but by zombie logic, right? Mrs. Justin O is just another human to eat. So there's something about Melanie that is different from the other Hungrys clearly, right? And she's aware of it, which is interesting.

Yes. And her conflict, her divided loyalties, you might say, I think are going to be pretty important as the movie goes on. So they decide to keep Melanie with them. But John, you want to describe what they put on her to keep themselves safe?

Yeah. They find in this truck this horrible clear mask. It's like a clear hockey mask, and they make her wear it over her face, essentially, so that she cannot bite them. And then they handcuff her. And at one point, for most of this first bit, they actually handcuff her and attach her to the top of the truck in the gunner's position, so she's not in the truck with them.

So this is where starting now, Sergeant Parks is the person you hate the most in this movie.

Yes.

But starting now, I don't want to call it a redemption arc, but he's going to start getting less mean towards Melanie. And he's still printing mean to Melanie at this point, but you can see signs that he's starting to like, see her as a human being. But they're heading to their main headquarters called Beacon, which is, and to get to it, they need to go through London. It's far away. It's a ways away. So there's, I'll, we can kind of move mostly through the scene quickly. They do have one kind of zombie attack encounter on the way to London.

And Redshirt 1. Yep.

Redshirt 1 eats it. It's a pretty neat scene. And you can see how, this is why I wouldn't last any amount of time in this type of situation. Because he's bitten and he's trying to get in the truck. And he's saying, I just, I wasn't bitten, let me in. And the Parks makes him wait long enough to see that indeed he is starting to turn and then they shoot him. And you can see that if they had just wavered, I guess a little bit and said, sure, get in the truck, we'll take a look at your bite, that would have doomed them all, right?

Right. Again, it gets to those tough moral choices, right? Like he tries to get in the truck and you don't actually see Sergeant Parks, you see an arm come out of the truck with a pistol in it. And he's like, get back. So it's similar to the scene in Dawn of the Dead where they're trying to decide what to do with Mac's headroom, right? Should they kill him now? Should they wait till he turns? It's that kind of scene. There's a sharp bit of acting by this poor redshirt who turns, and as he's turning, he's like, no, I'm fine. I'm fine like the whole time until he becomes a hungry and they have to shoot him.

Yeah. We haven't mentioned before, maybe this is when we first learn it, but they call zombies hungries.

The hungries, yes.

Which is, I had not heard, I feel like I've heard most other terms for zombies, but hungries was new for me. But always appreciate it when someone comes up with a new term. I just wanted to say two quick things that I noted from the zombie attack scene. First, I liked it shows soldiers missing shots when they're shooting at zombies. If you watch Walking Dead or any other shows, you see people, and we talked about this before, just make snapping off headshots like crazy.

With a pistol, right, 20 feet away.

But in this one, it takes several shots, I mean, several shots usually before they hit their target, which I like to see. And secondly, there's a little bit about like, they're using a special type of ammunition. I don't know, it's hollow point rounds or something like that. Anyway, they are doing this because they don't produce a big exit wound that sprays infected blood everywhere. And it's little details like that that kind of convey, like, it's been long enough since the zombie uprising that humans have kind of figured out ways to strategies for it. And I find that kind of intriguing.

You know, one other interesting thing I'll just mention here is we move on to the bulk of the film. They don't spend any time telling us how this all started. And they never do. You know, you just run into a world that is ruined by this fungus and these fungal zombies, these hungries. You don't, there's no old news clips, there's no flashbacks, nobody watches TV, nobody reads a book, there's no news. You know, it's just, this is the world we live in. And they're very clear about that.

That's interesting. Yeah. At no point do they talk about the origin, which I hadn't really thought about that while watching it, but it's totally true. Yeah. So they head on to London. They have to get through London to get to their base. At this point, they're on foot, because I think their truck broke down. And so Sergeant Parks kind of lays down. So London is just swarmed with zombies. But interestingly, the zombies are all standing still. They seem to have gone in kind of like a dormant state.

I think this is interesting. And then actually, like if I can actually try to throw a little science in our science fiction here, like if you're a creature who eats rarely and you're a fungal creature, and you're trying to stop from expending energy, what you would do is stand absolutely still because you have no other needs than consuming food unless you sense food. And I actually found that very interesting.

Yeah. So Sergeant Parks explains to the group of survivors how they're going to get through zombie infested London.

The shops were looted a long time ago. We might get lucky if we go through some of the houses.

Hungrys?

By the ton. We're going in on tiptoe.

Really? Through a herd of them. Their main sensory cue is smell. The gel makes us invisible.

Up to a point. Anything loud, any fast movements will wake them to. We walk slow, steady, no talking, no eye contact.

And so that is in fact what they do. And it turns out when the zombies have gone into this dormant state and I guess you're wearing your gel blocker, you can move slowly. This seems like this are always tense.

Yeah, it's well done and it does kind of freak you out. And it feels like these are practical effects here. The zombies look suitably gross and weird.

Yeah, there's some kind of fungus type growths that you see on some of them, I think. But yeah, I mean, they pretty much look like normal zombies, but I think they've done a little bit of lip service to like the fungal origins of them. So long story short, they make your way through the horde and they make their way to an abandoned hospital. At least I think that's what it is. Is that?

It is a hospital. It might have been a maternity hospital, but it is a hospital.

And so this is going to be kind of their base for a while here. This is, we're kind of smack in the middle of the movie now. And I want to hear one more clip here. And this is where they're kind of settling down for the night and Caldwell and Melanie are talking. And Caldwell is explaining to Melanie what she, what Caldwell thinks she is. So John, we learn a little bit more about what Melanie is, what and why she is maybe unique. Do you want to walk us through that?

Yeah, this is where the pregnancy horror part is, folks. When they were scouring London at one point for supplies, they discovered a bunch of babies in a maternity hospital that essentially had eaten their way out of their mothers. But they were the children of women who were pregnant who became infected.

And we are told this, this isn't in the film that we see.

Correct, we don't see this, thank you. This is Dr. Caldwell telling this to the other characters, that they found this out. And we discovered that Melanie is one of these creatures that survived in this way, like the other children.

So the group camps down and they agree to let Melanie out, basically. At this point, they start using her as kind of a scout.

Yeah, because the other, remember, the other Hungries will leave her alone, so she can move with impunity among them.

And there's a neat scene where they send her out the first time to scout out a way through the zombie hordes.

Oh, wait, before we get to that, can I tell you my one favorite scene with Kiran, which is at this point? Please. So at this point, when they're all bedding down for the night, you hear Melanie reading a book. She's in this children's area in the hospital, and there's books, and she's reading a book. And then you cut to her sitting with Kiran, and she is reading a book to him, which I think was just absolutely delightful. It's sort of revealing some of her humanity.

And she has a connection with Kiran that will persist until Kiran's unfortunate end later in the movie. So they send Melanie out basically to scout them away out through the horde, and you get a neat montage here of Melanie. She's scouting, but she's also exploring, and you see her sort of play acting normal life in some of these abandoned houses. It's a touching little scene. She used... I mean, it's clear that she has no idea of what a normal child's life is like. You know, only what she gleans from stories and then from poking around in these houses. So she helps them get out through the herd and make progress farther into London. She uses a dog. She finds a dog which she uses to like lure the herd away.

Well, there's one other bit I want to mention, which is the first thing she finds is a cat, which she eats. Now, there is a theme of cat here because in her little cell, her two few possessions are a couple of photos, and one of them is a photograph of a cat. So I think this part really highlights, yes, she is in so many ways like a real little girl, and she would love to have a cat to hold and snuggle, but also her hunger overcomes her and she eats this cat.

This scene is kind of a downer if you like animals, I have to say. Yes. I would like to imagine that this cute pupper escapes the herd. You don't see it get killed.

So, yeah, this little terrier runs, she sets it down in the middle of the hungries, and then it runs off and the hungries all go to chase it. And we never see it being eaten, so let's just assume it made it.

Yes. So they are progressing further through London. And I like this part a lot. We get some kind of big shots of London, and we see that it's totally overgrown by vegetation. And I'm not a scientist. I don't know how long it would take vegetation to overtake a city to the extent that this one is. But it sure looks to me like it's been quite a while since day zero, right?

Yeah.

And I guess if they found Melanie, they don't really say how old Melanie was when they found her. But if they found her when she had been recently quote, born, I guess we'd be at least a decade into the apocalypse, right?

Yeah, it seems like that to me. So that's a little unclear. And I think time is unclear here because it seems like the fungal growths have taken over everything.

Yes.

Yeah.

So they're moving towards what's going to be kind of the final location of the film. They're traveling through London. They do have one encounter on the way as Melanie continues to kind of scout their way through the city. They come across zombies that have entered sort of. Dr. Caldwell describes it, I think, as like a new stage of their life cycle.

Yes. They're gathered together in groups and the fungus is growing out of sort of every orifice in their body and forming like these giant sort of fungal trees with these pods on them. Yes. Which Dr. Caldwell picks up to examine.

And the pods are going to be important later in the movie. But like somebody in the scene says, mentions, I think, the word life cycle. And it kind of suggests that the zombie state is not like the end state of whatever this fungal fungus wants to do. It's a step towards something else, right?

So there is a wonderful moment here. There's a couple of good moments in this hospital. It's sort of the only moments of peace that this group of people has, and different ones make different connections. And Justin Oh says something to ask the question of Sergeant Parks, and I think his response is really interesting.

I'm not a good person.

I've never met a good person or a bad one. You just do whatever is in you to do.

So no one's ever responsible for anything.

Responsible to who?

Okay. So here's why I like that quote in particular. We're talking about a lot of this zombie stuff, right? Is about agency, right? So he's sort of making a very clear statement about how he feels about the agency of the individual and maybe why he's sort of softening to Melanie a little bit. I don't know. What do you think about this, Andy?

I think so too. Repeatedly throughout the film, Melanie or others have said something to the effect when talking about the zombies doing something bad is like they're just trying to survive or they just need to eat. Like they're just, this idea maybe is sinking into Sergeant Parks and to us that like everybody in this film is doing what they feel they need to do, right?

Yeah, it's sort of like the old joke, don't blame a shark for biting you. That's just what sharks do. You know, like the zombies in that sense are that way. Though again, I still have a question about their self-preservation, but that's another, we can talk about that in the wrap up. But yeah, I love that bit.

So they're pressing through London and they come to what's going to wind up being kind of the final set piece section of the movie here. They reach a mobile lab, like a military mobile set of structures or whatever. It's like a sealed environment. You know, it's a pretty good, safe sort of place to be, I guess.

It's bigger than a bus.

Yes.

It has multiple segments and rooms. Yeah.

It looks like a couple of RVs connected to each other. Yes. So there's different rooms in it. And so they go in and they are kind of talking about next steps. And a couple of key things happen here. One is they learn, they finally get radio contact with Beacon, the base that they're headed to. And they learn that Beacon is falling. It's in the course of being swarmed by zombies. And hearing this news, we haven't, I mean, this is, everybody seems to understand the implication here. There is no safe place to go anymore.

I would like to say, I don't, I appreciate the fact that the film does not hit us over the head with us. They play this sort of disjointed message from Beacon. And Beacon sort of asking, hey, how's your base? Can we come to your base? Because our base is in trouble. And like I think in a lesser movie or a more obvious movie, some character would say, oh my gosh, Beacon is falling, that's the end of the human race. But nobody actually utters that line of dialogue, right?

Yeah. It's almost like it doesn't need to be said.

It's almost like if you set up a story and set your stakes correctly and sort of make an interesting story, people might follow along and understand whether you're just telling them all the time.

Absolutely. So a number of other things are going on here, including so Melanie and Kieran, Kieran the soldier, they go out to hunt for food for the group, basically. Is that what they're sent out to do?

Yes. They're both going to hunt. Kieran is scrounging and she's doing her eating. They both got to eat. And I got to admit, what I thought was going to happen here, Andy, which is not what happens, is that she was going to stalk and kill Kieran. I don't know why I thought that. I thought this would be a moment where she'd be overwhelmed, but that's not what happens.

No, I had the exact same thought, John. It's like set up so that she, if the movie wanted to do this, it would make perfect sense, right? She could kill him and no one would ever know. But no, she seems, throughout all of this, Melanie is loyal to the people she's decided she loves, just to know, but she even shows loyalty to like Parks who has been this huge jerk to her throughout the film.

And Kieran too, that's the whole point of her and Kieran bonding is she has made a connection with him.

Yeah, and so several times the movie is pretty explicit that she has, she could just leave and never come back, but she always comes back. So Kieran is off scrounging and Melanie goes a different way and is also hunting around and Melanie comes across. Well, John, why don't you describe it for us? What does Melanie stumble across?

She comes across what I think is a former public library. And in the kids room, there are a group of kids like her, except they didn't grow up on a military base and go to school. They are feral, hybrid, zombie hungries that are, yeah, they're playing with each other's hair and reading books, even though they don't know what to do. They're like, living lives as children. They're like cave children or something. They're these feral zombie children, yeah, together in a group. I think this is important. They're a collective, they're like a collective of these, of these creatures who are not like the other hungries. They look like regular kids. They're not like the other hungries. They're not covered in fungus or dying or anything. They're clearly kids like Melanie.

Yeah, so they're kids like Melanie. Yeah, Melanie got an education at least, but these kids got none. But otherwise, same type of being, right? At some point earlier, Melanie, while they were talking about why the zombies seem to come together in herds, Melanie says something about like, well, maybe they basically just, maybe they just get lonely, they need company or whatever. And I think we see a little bit of that here, like that urge to find community is-

Yeah, these are definitely social animals, right? Like they're enjoying each other.

So, and they're clearly, even though they don't, they can't speak any languages because again, they're feral kids, but they're clearly communicating and kind of coordinating with each other. And it becomes obvious that they have detected prey because they all head out on the hunt. And Melanie kind of panics because who is their prey, John?

It's Kieran. Kieran is, they are stalking him. And yeah, it is a funny and disturbing scene where, do you want me to describe this?

Yes, yeah, walk us through the last moments of Kieran.

He finds an old news vendors place where like the, the metal shutter has been pushed down, but it's just enough room. If he takes off all his gear, he can slide in.

He was lead there though.

Oh, how is he lead there?

He's following a trail of food that they left there.

That's right, that's right. He picks up these cans and he doesn't think it's weird. So he goes into this news place to this old newsstand and it is, so he thinks he's won the lottery. There's actually a wonderful scene where like, he finds like a pack of potato chips and he eats them as if they were the greatest thing anyone has ever eaten. And like the place is just full of food. He's so happy. But one of these feral kids comes in, waving in her hand a rat, like here, eat this. And he's like, no, you're going to have it. But he doesn't immediately shoot her. And he follows her. She sort of lures him away. And it turns out it's a trap these kids have set for him.

It's a funny scene because it's just funny that she would find a rat a tasty treat. So she's like trying to lure him with a rat and he's allowing himself to be lured, but for the wrong reasons, right? Because he's trying to like, yeah.

Yeah. Now, this is the point, these kids with their sort of scraggly hair and their face paint and their sort of feralness, I don't know how it is for you. It is very close to being a little too much for me to buy their civilization. But I go with it because I'm enjoying the movie to this point, and I'm willing to let it go. But they're maybe the least convincing thing in the movie, if I can say that.

I would agree with that. Yeah. So yeah, finish off the scene. What happens to Kieran?

So they fall on him and they eat him like they're zombies. And when he is found later, he has been gutted, like all his intestines have been eaten and everything. It's pretty gross. Like, this is probably the goriest, seeing Kieran's body after they fall on him is probably the goriest thing in the movie. Except for that rat earlier, but that's another story. We didn't cover that. We don't need to go back to that, but not the rat we just saw, the rat that was in the baby carriage. But again, let's move on.

Yeah, that was best that we not talk about that or ever think about it again. Yeah, actually, it's worth pointing out, this is not really a super gory movie. It has a few moments of grossness, but there's not the extreme amount of goop and gore that you see in your Dawn of the Dead type film. Right.

Yeah.

All right. So survivor count, I think we're down to four. We have Dr. Caldwell back in the lab. We have Sergeant Parks. We have Justin O and Melanie. That's it, right?

Yep.

But do you include Melanie as a survivor since she is a zombie?

I see. We, this is, that's revealing, I think, Mr. Brad. We love Melanie at this point. I think, I don't know how you feel about it, Andy, but I've always loved Melanie, even when I learned her true nature, and I still love her now.

Yes. Well, this is one of the points that this movie is making, I think. Soon, we will be tested of which team are we on. Are we on team Melanie, or are we on team human, like regular humans, I guess? But that's in just a few minutes. So back at the lab, Melanie goes back to the lab, and we learn, I was a little confused by this. Dr. Caldwell is dying of blood poisoning. I don't think she's been bit, right? She's just been wounded.

No, she cut her hand. So just to flashback, when the base was invaded, some zombies broke through the window to her lab, and she picked up a piece of glass and stabbed them with it. So she didn't get zombie blood on her, but she cut her hand very badly, and it's become infected.

Yeah. And they decide to go out and try and save Ciaran. And this is a pretty interesting scene. So they quickly, they find Ciaran, he's been eaten. And but as they are kind of finding Ciaran, they discover they're surrounded by this like pack of feral zombie children. So John, why don't you walk us through like this kind of curious scene?

Yeah, it's interesting. So when they discover this pack of feral children, Melanie starts to snarl at them and try to intimidate them. And then she tells Parks and Justin Oto back off, and she proceeds to like go into one-on-one combat with the leader of these kids and wins, right? And so the rest of the kids are afraid of her. So then she, it's actually one of my favorite, it's one of the only funny moments in the movie. She looks back at Sergeant Parks and says, pretend you're afraid of me. And he goes, pretend. Like, yes, it's great. So she gets the kids to back off and so that Justin Oto and Parks can go back to the lab.

This is a well done scene. And I think I got to give like some kudos to like a child actor for pulling this off pretty well, Melanie.

Yes.

In the course of the scene, she is alternating between talking in regular English to the adults and then immediately switching and snarling with this fural animalistic rage at the other zombies. And the impression you get is that she's like this almost just like, well, she has a foot in both of these worlds, right? The civilized world. But she also kind of natively speaks the fural language of these zombies, right?

Yeah.

She's kind of a link, you know, or a mediator or translator. At any rate, they they get back to the lab. Um, where Kieran is gone. I'm sorry.

You said mediator, and I heard meat eater.

Oh, well, that works too, actually. So they get back to the lab, and Caldwell is waiting for them to ambush them. She subdues them all with the gas, and she's getting ready to operate on Melanie. She's made it clear. She thinks that Melanie is the key to making a vaccine. But she has underestimated Melanie here. Because of her fungal characteristics, Melanie is not susceptible to the gas.

She doesn't have to breathe as much, yeah.

Exactly. And she challenges. And so Caldwell makes her final pitch to Melanie. Please let me do this. Sacrifice yourself, let me create this vaccine, so the people you love can live safely.

And she's really trying to manipulate her and say, and I don't think Caldwell cares at all about just to know. She is a scientist who wants to find the cure to the Zombie Fungal Plague. That is all that Caldwell wants. She doesn't care about these people at all.

I agree. Caldwell here at the end comes, I mean, she is just, it's full on manipulation of Melanie's feelings, and Melanie's childhood, right? Her kind of naivety. But the key point of this film comes here, and that is Melanie is on the verge of agreeing to do this to save Justin now. And Melanie asks Dr. Caldwell to admit if hungries like her, like Melanie, are alive or dead. And this is the question Caldwell has kind of refused to answer throughout this movie to this point.

And in fact, Melanie quotes back a line from the beginning of the movie.

That's right.

Where Caldwell says, Imitating human responses? Question mark. And Melanie repeats that line back to Caldwell. It's actually pretty great.

Yes, it's a great scene. And I guess you could say Caldwell makes the mistake here of saying, of admitting that yes, she believes that Melanie and by extension, the other Hungries are alive. And you see the change in Melanie here. And she replies, well, if we're alive, why should we die for you? And that's, that's the big question of this movie right there. From Melanie's perspective, she is the future and humanity is obsolete, right?

So yeah, and then, so, so just to know and Parks are knocked out on the floor. I forget how she gets away from Caldwell, but Caldwell is really weak.

She can hardly stand and stuff. She's dying basically. I don't remember exactly, but she escapes and grabbing a book of matches. Yes. So Melanie heads out into like the outside world and Caldwell well, kind of stumbles after her. Do you want to describe Caldwell's? Yeah.

Caldwell gets what's coming to her. Yes. Well, Melanie is running off. I'll let you say what Melanie is off doing, but what happens to Caldwell is she immediately gets surrounded by the feral children. Yes. Who she's about to defend herself and then she just sort of slumps and they swarm her and kill her.

Yeah. And so meanwhile, Melanie is heading out and we learn that her destination is one of these big tree like fungus towers or trees. Yes.

Covered in spore pods.

Yes. And the movie has, check off spore pods, I guess. The movie has mentioned these spore pods a few times. And Melanie uses the match to set this tree on, fungus tree on fire and it is incredibly flammable. So it immediately alights on fire. This whole structure, there's a neat shot of like this burning pillar of fire against the London backdrop.

Yeah, with the spore pods exploding.

Yeah. And so, yeah, we see that Melanie is not trying to destroy the fungus. She is trying, she is using flame to cause those spore pods to burst open and disperse their spores into the air.

Melanie is making a choice. She is choosing herself and these feral kids as the future over humanity.

Yes. And it has been established to some conversations before, you know, that should these pods ever burst, that would be it for humanity, basically. So Melanie is making that choice. And we are here in the final minutes of the movie. She heads back to the mobile lab and on the way, she comes across Parks. And this is a pretty neat, this is a pretty neat scene. I want to talk about this. I might get your take on this scene, John, for a minute. But basically, she confronts Parks, and they have a quick conversation where Parks kind of realizes what Melanie has done. And they have a conversation.

Yeah.

What did you do? I made the pods open. Oh, Jesus Christ.

It's going to be all right.

No, it's over.

It's all over.

It's not over. It's just not yours anymore.

It's not over. It's just not yours anymore.

Yeah. That is a great line by Melanie there. Yeah.

And so Parks is infected because the spores now blanket or fill the atmosphere. And John, am I correctly interpreting? Does it suggest that Parks might be Melanie's father?

I'm not sure. But what it does say is that, look, I think it explains why Parks was willing to give Melanie latitude and maybe wasn't as hard as we thought, because he says, the last time I saw my wife, she was seven months pregnant, and I never found out what happened. And then you get a shot of his wedding ring. So I don't think it says explicitly that Melanie is his child, but what it may say is that he has a soft spot for her.

I like him not being Melanie's father. I think that you're correct.

Yeah. I'm not sure, but that's how I took it.

And then Melanie, at Parks' request, shoots him.

This was hard for me, by the way. I don't know why. We've seen zombie babies, we've seen all kinds of stuff, but the idea of forcing a 10-year-old child to kill you as you turn into a zombie as a favor was upsetting.

It is an emotional scene. I can't stress how much you hate Parks at the beginning of this movie, but by the end, you're kind of tearing up when he is in his final seconds here. And I think importantly, Melanie is not like a cold-blooded killer here. She is crying. She doesn't want to do it. It's hard for her to do this. Even though she understands that the age of old humans is going away, it's not something to celebrate. She's not happy about it, right?

Right.

So then we get back to the final, the film's final scene. And why don't you walk us through the last minute or two of this film? It starts with Justin Oh waking up at some undefined point in the future.

The sun's on her face. She's waking up in a single tear, rolls out of her eye down the side of her face. And Melanie walks up to the window and knocks on it. It's the airlock of the travel science lab. And apparently Justin Oh is living inside of it because the spores would turn her into a hungry. And the first thing Melanie does is tape up two photos. These are the photos that she herself used to use, used to leave in her little cell in her room at the beginning. And you realize what is happening is Melanie now has Justin Oh trapped in this mobile lab because she loves her, but she is making Justin Oh be the teacher for all of these feral kids. And you also see a bunch of kids in red sweatshirts that were the kids from the lab at the beginning. They've all come together in London and formed a class, and they're starting to form a society with Melanie as their leader, their enforcer, making them sit down and listen, and Justin Oh is their teacher. And then the movie just sort of ends there with Justin Oh going through the lesson. And the last thing is Melanie says, can we have stories? And Justin says, maybe later. And she begins the lesson for the day.

And that's a wrap on The Girl with All the Gifts. So let's do a quick recap. How did humanity do in this film? So we started with about a half dozen survivors, and by my count, only Justin Oh is alive at the end.

Yeah, and I don't know how long she's gonna live. She's gotta become hungry at some point. So humanity's over. You know what movie, you know what I immediately thought of upon watching this film?

What's that?

And this is not a film, it's a book, but I thought of I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. The plot of this book, spoiler, if you haven't read it, it's still wonderful if you know the plot. But the plot is there's a man who survives an apocalypse similar to this one, except for they're vampires instead of zombies. And he spends his days walking around staking vampires and realizes that the vampires have formed their own society and he's the last human. And they let them kill him because he's the last one. And it definitely has that feel like humanity is over, man. Here's the next stage of evolution.

So that is actually another thing I had in mind when I picked this movie, is this movie is a direct descendant of I Am Legend and others in asking that question of what if the zombie apocalypse is the start of something new for humanity? And it's like the dinosaurs giving way to a world of mammals or something. That's an apocalypse for the dinosaurs, but for the mammals, it's a brand new world, right? And does this feel like a bleak movie to you, John? Because like you say, the end scene where Justin is teaching the kids is heartwarming and a little chilling at the same time, I would say.

Yeah, I think it is chilling. I ultimately find it heartwarming, and I can tell you why. Whoever was in charge of casting Senia as Melanie in this movie, should get some sort of award because she is impossible to hate and even just, she makes the choice to kill the remainder of humanity, and you empathize with her because she's making it in the context of Dr. Caldwell trying to kill her and turn her brain into mush to make a vaccine. I felt bad for Justin and the most complex feelings I have in the movie are for Justin. She wanted to save these kids and she did, and she's teaching them, but clearly, she is alone and lonely, and there's a big thematic pivot to how are we treating these kids to save humanity, to how these kids are treating humanity to further their own growth as a species, and I found that really resonant. So I'm going to say, I did not find it bleak in the same way that I found the end credit sequence of Dawn of the Dead where everybody dies bleak. I thought it was interesting. I will not say bleak. I will say maybe a little dark, but emotionally resonant. I think that's the important part.

Yeah, and this is where I do think that Pandora's Box theme, like it does land. I think sometimes it feels a little forced, but at the end of the day, Melanie has... That is where you are at the end of this film. A lot of the destruction of humankind has been unleashed. That's pretty bleak, but there is certainly hope there as well, just like with Pandora. And the hope is that Melanie is a good person, right? And so a society that Melanie leads is going to be something that has some good in it, right?

Yeah, exactly. And I don't know what's going to happen. You know, it's going to be winter. I don't know what these kids are going to eat. It's complicated. But I also feel like, I don't know, I don't feel hopeless at the end of this movie, I guess is what I would say.

So one last question for you, John, and then we'll sign out, I think, or then you can tell us what we're going to watch for next time. How do you think this compares to Dawn of the Dead? I mean, and I don't mean like, which is the better film, but which feels like the more authentic zombie experience to you?

That's a great question. When we were first talking about doing these baseline episodes, Dawn of the Dead by Zack Snyder was the first one I thought of because it's like a paint by numbers zombie movie, and I did enjoy watching it. So I think it's the more, like if you think zombie movie, it's the more sort of classic zombie movie. However, I am relieved to see that there are zombie movies in our future that contain emotional resonance and nuance and other things that maybe I could enjoy in as adults beyond just watching Good Kills in a zombie movie. You know what I mean? So I enjoyed this movie more, and it is the other side of zombie movies. So we're going back to the beginning of zombie movies, so it may be some time, but maybe we'll be surprised before we get an emotionally resonant zombie movies like this. But I think in the modern era, where zombie movies are so prevalent, you start to see ones that are more thematically diverse than just another movie of people getting eaten by zombies.

So John, that's as good a segue as any into what we're going to be watching and discussing for the next episode. So let us know. So tell us what's on the on the doc next.

OK, so next we're going to go to the beginning of zombie films as we know them. We're going to go to 1932. We're going to watch the film White Zombies starring none other than Bella Lugosi. And I am very curious to see what we think of that movie. I know nothing about it, but this is generally considered to be the first zombie film. So that's where we're going to start.

Yeah, I also know nothing about this film. My only reference for White Zombie is the heavy metal band. So I am excited to see what awaits us.

And Rob Zombie took the name of the band from this movie.

All right. Well, I'm excited. We'll talk to you guys next episode. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like minded people find the show. See you next time.