The Girl With All The Gifts s Hollywood's ever-growing list of book to movie adaptations — here's the breakdown of the biggest differences between the book and the movie.
The story takes places in a post-apocalyptic world in which most of humanity is infected with a fungal disease that turns them into mindless zombies, known as "hungries." The Girl With All The Gifts focuses on a group of scientists at a military base studying a group of hybrid hungry children — they still have a taste for blood, but they retain their full mental capabilities. When their base is overrun by a horde of hungries, one bright young hungry named Melanie leads her captors through the city, in hopes to help find a cure for the disease.
M.R. Carey, who penned both the novel and screenplay pulled a bit of an unusual move, as he wrote both versions of the story simultaneously. But despite that, there are still a couple notable differences between the novel and film versions of The Girl With All The Gifts.
The Girl With All The Gifts Race Swaps Melanie and Helen
Carey wrote his characters a little differently for the screen than he did the page. For starters, the races of Melanie and her teacher Helen were flipped for the film. In the novel, Melanie is described as having fair light white skin, while Helen has very dark, black skin. But the film version of typical post-apocalyptic zombie films.
Helen's Story Is Changed From The Novel
Perhaps the biggest change from the novel to the film is Helen's story. The film version of The Girl With All The Gifts doesn't give much background to her story. She is just a teacher trying to educate and protect the young hungries. But in the novel, her undying dedication to protecting Melanie and the other young hungries comes from her past. She accidentally murdered a child once and never reported it to the authorities, and that guilt followed her for the rest of her life; looking out for Melanie is like her penance.
Helen's fate is the same in both versions of this story — she is spared from infection by the pods and continues to teach the young hungries. In the novel's ending, she appears happy to do so. While on the military base, her students were essentially cuffed to their desks, so they didn't hurt the humans. But with a hazmat suit, she's able to openly interact with them, and they can roam freely as well. In the film, Helen sees her fate as imprisonment. Her students can roam about freely, but she is confined to a small, sealed medical lab. One of the final shots of The Girl With All The Gifts is a teary Helen awaking in her new prison, knowing this is all her life will ever be. It's a grim, but still appropriate ending for the story.
