Fans of Train to Busan have another zombie movie subverting expectations they should watch with an 86% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score. While most zombie movies are about blood and guts and the struggle to survive the mᴀss unᴅᴇᴀᴅ hoards and the evil humans left alive, Train to Busan presents something different. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the 2016 zombie horror film features a father and his daughter caught together on a train when the zombie outbreak began. They attempt to hold onto their humanity while the dad tries to protect his daughter until the terrifying Train to Busan ending.
The release has an impressive 95% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics praising its unique and entertaining take on the zombie genre. With the genre growing tired thanks to an onslaught of movies and the mᴀssive The Walking ᴅᴇᴀᴅ franchise on television, Train to Busan presents zombie fans with something new, unique, and intelligent. The good news is that other movies are out there with a similar goal of delivering zombie entertainment in ways that hadn’t been seen before. The 2016 horror drama The Girl with All the Gifts fits that description perfectly.
Why Fans Of Train To Busan Will Enjoy The Girl With All The Gifts
Both Zombie Movies Are About People Trying To Hold Onto Their Humanity
What Train to Busan does differently from other zombie movies is give fans something they might not have expected from the story’s emotional core. The film starts with a broken relationship between the father and daughter, and then it descends into their fight for survival and having to hold onto each other as the zombie hoards close in. Train to Busan is as much about the father and daughter’s relationship and remembering why they love each other as it is about zombies. It is a zombie horror movie with a surprising amount of heart.
The Girl with All the Gifts is a film that ticks those boxes. In The Girl with All the Gifts, the movie focuses on an army base where zombie children are kept contained and experimented on as humanity tries desperately to find a cure to the disease that has turned most of the world into mindless zombies. However, one of these children is Melanie, a young girl who can somewhat control her bloody urges unless she gets a scent of blood – and even then, she fights it.
The novel by Mike Carey (one of the co-creators of the comic series Lucifer) is narrated from Melanie’s point of view. Having one of the zombies as the main narrating character is different, and the fact she doesn’t know she is a zombie at first makes it even more unique. The film doesn’t go as deep into that idea, but it still presents a world where the zombies are not always the villains, and like Train to Busan, it tells the story of someone trying to hold onto her humanity, even as the world tries to tear it from her.
How The Girl With All The Gifts Differs From Train To Busan
The Girl With All The Gifts Is Not A Full-Blooded Action Movie
The Girl with All the Gifts has action scenes where zombies attack and the military has to defend themselves. However, that is not the main focus of the film. While Train to Busan is all about action and the fight for survival, The Girl with All the Gifts is more of a drama movie about a young zombie girl trying to stay alive and understand what is happening around her. Some humans want to save humanity, like Glenn Close’s Caroline Caldwell, but the focus here is on which species deserve to live – humans or the new hybrid zombie children.
One surviving human has also developed a relationship with Melanie in Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton). The Girls with All the Gifts’ ending has a twist that shows who ends up as the dominant species, at least in this part of the world. Unlike Train to Busan, which ends with the military trying to protect humanity and killing any zombie they see, The Girl with All the Gifts ends with the zombie children proving their place in the world, changing the idea of who the victims and heroes really are.
