I’d love to hear some impressions if any of our friends across the pond manage to catch this.
I caught it at Fantastic Fest today, and I really liked it. I can’t say anything about how it compares to the book, but I can say that it does not shy away from the horror of its premise. It goes full-on zombie movie at times.
Yes it’s a decent little movie. Some genuine shocks. Very strong central performance. A slightly new take on Zombies. Some annoying flaws tho and at times a Children’s Film Foundation (olde English institution making films for kids) feel. Overall good tho feels a bit YA.
Careful not to spoil anything, but the ending is a bit grim for YA isn’t it? I mean, I guess it’s hopeful in a way.
I am a bit surprised to see two of you refer to this as YA, the book certainly didn’t read that way. If it is, I agree with stusser that it’s about the grimmest children’s story I’ve read.
It’s definitely a YA novel. I think you might be surprised by how grim they often are these days. I actually think this one ends on a hopeful note, though. Of a sort. Assuming the movie ends the same way, at least.
I read the book last year and it didn’t read like a YA novel to me. Nothing beyond having a younger protagonist and thus a more… innocent(?) point of view screamed YA.
Doesn’t mean young adults wouldn’t enjoy it. But I’m not sure how we define YA literature these days. Is it marketed as such?
Edit: checked GoodReads and neither the genre list or awards seem to be specifically YA
Mind you, as a teen-ager in the 80ies, Stephen King was my equally grim “YA” literature. Anything can qualify.
Yeah I guess I don’t really understand what it means to be “YA” these days. I mean sure, I would have eaten it up (ha ha) as a teenager but I was always a bit of a weirdo.
It’s possible that kids today have much better taste than back in the day.
As a child, the only books I read that were aimed at children were the Xanth series, and I found them peurile by age 13.
The Xanth books weren’t YA, though. They were consistently shelved with and marketed as adult novels. They just seemed to have a large audience of teens and younger.
I can’t imagine an adult actually enjoying those books.
Well, that’s not true. Lots of borderline braindead adults.
Never read any Xanth, but aren’t those books the ones with the creepy, borderline pedo undertones?
I was wrong about The Girl With All The Gifts being categorized as YA, seems like. Anyway no sign that Amazon considers it such. But I do stand by a lot of YA these days being much grimmer than you might expect, and personally I feel like the main difference between YA fiction and adult fiction is marketing and publisher classification.
Well, Anthony’s gotten a lot closer to that sort of thing elsewhere, particularly the novel Firefly (no relation to the show). But yes, there is a fairly juvenile obsession with sex that orbits teenage girls as often as not, and the books’ attitude towards women in general is questionable. Not that you would notice at 12 or 13, probably.
I noticed Rckay mentioned it being YA above but on reread he seems to think it just “feels” YA. Not having seen the movie I can’t dispute that.
Oh I was fine with banging teens; I was one! I just couldn’t stand reading the books, they were poorly written garbage.
Well I think technically banging a teen while yourself being a teen isn’t really pedo, but that’s probably as far as we need to take that particular digression.
Sorry been away - anyone here seen it yet ? Mayb by YA what I meant was something about tone ie it feels like a 15 certificate (which of course it was I think here in uk) take on horror as opposed to an 18 certificate. So then a film squarely aimed at that age group rather than a film that happens to fall into that certificate range.
Been a while since I saw it though.
Just started reading the book now.
No, looks like this goes into limited release in the U.S. on February 24.
Is that a bad sign? You know how March is the month where sucky movies get sent to die, right?