Film

The Girl with All the Gifts

A gutsy, unflinching entry in the fungal-apocalypse subgenre, adapted from Mike Carey's own novel. Part road movie, part body-horror, it follows a hyper-intelligent girl kept in classroom captivity by scientists convinced she holds humanity's last cure. Cool-headed, morally serious, and occasionally devastating, it never softens its questions about what we owe the next generation, even one born from catastrophe.

TMDb rating6.6

If you liked this

Train to Busan2016

Yeon Sang-ho's zombie thriller turns a moving train into a pressure cooker of grief and heroism, with a father-daughter bond as raw as anything in Girl. Kinetic, devastating, one of the genre's best.

But Subtitled and relentlessly sad by the final act; if you want your zombies without the tearjerker, look elsewhere.

Train to Busan poster

28 Days Later2002

Danny Boyle's grimy, adrenaline-soaked outbreak film basically wrote the modern rulebook for British apocalypse horror, and its bleak moral clarity — soldiers as the real threat — rhymes directly with Gifts.

But Shaky digital cinematography and a slower midsection test patience if you crave nonstop, wall-to-wall action.

28 Days Later poster

A Quiet Place2018

A tight, wordless survival thriller about a family protecting a child in a world gone monstrous — same tension between protection and sacrifice, minus the fungus.

But High-concept gimmick (silence) can feel thin on a second watch, and the scares are jump-heavy.

A Quiet Place poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Never Let Me Go2010

Both films ask what a society owes a child engineered or discovered for its usefulness to others; here the answer is even bleaker for being ordinary.

A hushed British drama about children raised in a pastoral institution for a purpose they slowly realise is not their own — the same quiet horror of a child's worth being decided by adults, without a single monster.

But No horror, no action — it's a slow, literary heartbreak that some will find too restrained.

Never Let Me Go poster
More like this (8)

The Last of Us2023

The most direct cousin here: a Cordyceps-driven apocalypse, a gruff protector, and a girl who might be the cure. Prestige TV pacing gives the ideas room to breathe that a two-hour film can't.

But Nine episodes is a big ask, and some plot beats will feel very familiar if you just watched Gifts.

The Last of Us poster

Children of Men2006

Cuarón's masterpiece imagines a world without children being reborn around one impossible pregnancy — same aching question of what a single young life is worth to a dying species.

But No zombies, no action beats — this is dystopia as slow-burn dread, patient and quietly devastating.

Children of Men poster

Cargo2017

An Australian outback zombie film that swaps scares for heartbreak, following a father racing to place his infant with safe hands before he turns. Tender where Gifts is clinical.

But Small-scale and low-budget; if you came for scares, this is closer to a drama with zombies.

Cargo poster

28 Weeks Later2007no page yet

The underrated sequel doubles down on the idea that the infected aren't the only monsters, and features a child immune carrier whose blood might hold the cure — sound familiar?

But Meaner and colder than the original, with a rougher, more nihilistic ending some viewers find punishing.

World War Z2013

If you want the scientist-races-for-a-cure structure blown up to global blockbuster scale, this delivers it loud and fast, with Brad Pitt hopscotching continents while civilisation crumbles around him.

But Slicker and shallower than Gifts, with most of the moral complexity sanded off in favour of spectacle.

World War Z poster

I Am Legend2007

Will Smith's lone-survivor drama shares Gifts' interest in whether the infected have retained some flicker of humanity worth saving, rather than simply destroying it.

But The CGI infected have aged badly, and the theatrical ending softens the film's darker instincts.

I Am Legend poster

Village of the Damned1960

Melanie's unsettling calm and the adults' fear of what she represents has a direct ancestor in this decades-older story of children as both innocent and existential threat.

The original uncanny-child horror: a village of identical, glowing-eyed children with powers beyond human understanding, and the adults who must decide whether to protect or destroy them.

But Dated effects and a stiff, very 1960s pace — this is more eerie than scary by modern standards.

Village of the Damned poster

Fantastic Fungi2019

The zombifying fungus in Gifts isn't invented from nothing; this film shows you the real organism, letting actual science recontextualise the fiction's horror.

A gorgeous, meditative documentary about real fungal networks, including the actual Cordyceps parasite that inspired Gifts' outbreak — mind-altering footage of nature doing something stranger than fiction.

But Zero horror, zero plot — this is a slow, trippy nature doc, not a thriller substitute.

Fantastic Fungi poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by