Seeing that it now has a sequel, I finally got around to reading M.R. Carey’s first novel, The Girl With All the Gifts (2015).

I’m not sure what I was expecting. As the book has been out for over two years, I don’t think it is giving away too much to tell you the story takes place in a future dystopia, made such by a literal zombie apocalypse. And with all of us having lived through seven years of The Walking Dead, Brad Pitt in World War Z and slightly lighter takes such as Zombieland and Warm Bodies just to name a few, one might conclude that zombies, as a monster fad, might be played out both on screen and in print.

So if I was expecting anything at all, it wasn’t much. In fact, my local bookseller placed it in the YA section which meant I might either love it like A Series of Unfortunate Events or hate it with a burning passion, like Twilight.

Turns out, I definitely didn’t hate it.

In fact, I will share with you that, in my opinion, the level of dystopia in this particular future was so extreme that the book came off like a horrifically colorful road accident I couldn’t stop looking at. It also made me decide to read something a bit more lighthearted about a soul-sucking demon next, before embarking on Carey’s follow up, The Boy on the Bridge.

It therefore didn’t surprise me a bit that the film version by the UK’s newest indy shop Poison Chef Productions, which was released in the US in January, made iHorror’s list of The Best Horror Films of 2017 So Far. As Chicago is in the middle of a Biblical flood rather than a zombie apocalypse, I plan on hunkering down to watch it this weekend, so I can’t comment on how it stacks up to the book just yet. But the feedback I’ve heard so far indicates it is not only fairly true to the source material but also far outstrips its rather minuscule budget of $5M; half of which likely went to securing Glenn Close in the “evil doctor” role.

It’s available to stream now on Amazon, YouTube and others, but have a look at the trailer.

So, what do you think? Have you seen it, or read the book and seen it? Post a comment or drop a line to sue@blackgate.com.