The Girl with All the Gifts (film)

She Who Brings Gifts
Directed by	Colm McCarthy
Written by	M.R. Carey
Produced by	Will Clarke Camille Gatin Angus Lamont
Starring	Gemma Arterton Glenn Close Paddy Considine
Cinematography	Simon Dennis
Edited by	Matthew Cannings
Production companies	Warner Bros Altitude Film Sales BFI Film Fund Poison Chef
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

She Who Brings Gifts is an upcoming British post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller film directed by Colm McCarthy. The screenplay was written by M.R. Carey adapted from his own novel The Girl with All the Gifts. The film stars Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine. The plot depicts a dystopian future following a breakdown of society after most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection and focuses upon the struggle of a scientist, a teacher and two soldiers who embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.

Plot

In the near future, most of humanity has been infected by a variation of a fungus known as the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (also referred to as a zombie fungus). The infected, referred to as "hungries", quickly lose their mental powers and feed on the flesh of healthy humans. The disease spreads through blood and spit, but can also spread through spores created by the fungus, which needs an unknown trigger to be opened. The few surviving members of the human race live in heavily-guarded Birmingham.

It sets up a military base, called Hotel Echo. In the heavily guarded compound, a small group of children are being studied in a programme to discover the cure .They are the last hope the human race has for survival. 10-year-old Melanie attends school lessons daily. Like any young girl she has a favourite teacher and a favourite subject, however, she is escorted to class in full body restraints and when they come for her, it is with guns drawn. What sets Melanie and her fellow pupils apart is that these children are second-generation hybrids - part ‘Hungry’, part human. But unlike first generation ‘Hungries’, are able to retain their mental powers and only lose control when they get too close to human scent. The men in the base, led by Sergeant Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine), find and capture these second-generation (who are children) and bring them to the base, where they are educated by a number of teachers and tested by the head scientist, Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close). This often means she has to kill the children, something with which Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton), a teacher at the base, is uncomfortable. Melanie excels in the classroom, is acutely attentive, imaginative, highly intelligent with a genius-level IQ and loves Miss Justineau. Melanie’s talents draw the attention of Dr. Caldwell who is searching for the key to the evolution of the virus.

On the day that Caldwell decides to dissect Melanie, Justineau interrupts and tries to save Melanie. At that moment, however, the base is attacked by a huge pack of hungries, forcing the three to stick together. As they escape, they find Sergeant Parks and his subordinate, Private Kieran Gallagher (Fisayo Akinade), as well. The five decide to travel to The Beacon, which is a considerable distance away, but argue on whether to bring Melanie or not. They decide to take her along after placing a muzzle on her.

As the group walk, they come across the Rosalind Franklin Lab. The lab, commissioned when the epidemic was in its early stages, is a mobile lab with state-of-art facilities for both experimentation and attack. The lab is deserted, and the five enter it. Caldwell, whose health is deteriorating due to an infection, experiments with the limited samples available.

During their stay, Melanie comes across a group of child hungries. Melanie sees that they, too, retain their mental functions, although they have no language of their own, being uneducated. Afraid that they will be experimented on, Melanie instead tells the adults at the lab she saw something else, but she later reveals the truth to Justineau. But Gallagher, scared, sets off from the lab. He is found by the intelligent child hungries and eaten.

Meanwhile, Caldwell gets anxious about her experiments and realises she has little time left to live. In the absence of the others, she drives the lab away into hiding. She also captures one of the intelligent hungries and experiments on him, making some remarkable findings. Meanwhile, Justineau and Parks find the lab again with Melanie's help, but Caldwell does not let them inside. Melanie explores her surroundings where she finds a giant city wide forest of fungus spores.

Melanie tricks Caldwell into letting her inside. Caldwell realises she is dying and, in her last moments, tells her findings to Melanie. Intelligent hungries are second-generation ones, meaning their parents were hungries when they were conceived. Those born in this way retain their mental abilities. With this said, Caldwell dies.

Outside the lab, Parks and Justineau are cornered by the intelligent hungries. Melanie calls them off, but is too late to save Parks who is bitten. In his last conscious minutes, she asks him to shoot the spore forest with the labs built in flamethrower, deducing correctly that the environmental trigger to open the spores is fire. Since the spores are numerous, it will likely infect the remaining healthy humans not only in the UK but globally as well. Melanie foresees that as long as there are healthy humans, the war between them and the hungries will continue, meaning that for second-generation hungries to be born and rebuild the world, every one must first be infected. Parks agrees to this and asks her to shoot him, preferring this is to living as a hungry, which she agrees to.

Some time later, Justineau regains consciousness in the lab and sees Melanie there. Melanie leads her to a group of intelligent hungries, to whom Justineau, fully protected from the spores, starts teaching the alphabet.

Cast

• Gemma Arterton as Helen Justineau
• Glenn Close as Dr. Caroline Caldwell
• Paddy Considine as Sgt. Eddie Parks
• Anamaria Marinca as Dr. Selkirk
• Dominique Tipper as Devani
• Fisayo Akinade as Private Kieran Gallagher
• Anthony Welsh as Dillon
• Sennia Nanua as Melanie

Production

Upon the book's release, M.R. Carey announced that the book would be made into its own movie, with the screenplay already written and a movie a deal in place and revealed that the movie and the novel were written in tandem, and the movie's title will differ from the book in that it will be under the moniker She Who Brings Gifts. On the 23rd of March, 2015, the casting was announced for the film. Carey has stated that the film is true to the book with the exception of the complete removal of 'Junkers' from the plot line.

Filming

Principal photography began on May 17, 2015 in The West Midlands taking place in Birmingham city centre and other Birmingham boroughs including Dudley and Sandwell and also outside of Birmingham Hanley in Stoke-upon-Trent and Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, England.