'The Girl with all the Gifts', Colm McCarthy (2016), as Post-Horror – Post-Apocalyptic, Post-Modern and Post-Romero, Zombie Film

Abstract

David Church’s definition of post-horror as a sub-genre which is characterized by “formal minimalism” (Church, 2021: 13) and which downplays action scenes as well as explicit horror and gore, seems to exclude de facto the most corporeal and grotesque sub-genre in horror production, namely zombie fiction. However, as The Girl with all the Gifts (Colm McCarthy, 2016) shows, post-horror’s concern for “family dramas about grief, mourning and monstrous reproduction” (Church, 2021: 13), probably contributes to bridging the gap between the two sub-genres. In addition to this, the alleged explicitness and conventional narrative of zombie fiction, such as they can be noticed in McCarthy’s film, might be questioned if ever these stylistic traits are analyzed as manifestations of the grotesque. My contention is that Bakhtin’s ideation of grotesque realism and of the carnivalesque, allows the viewer to perceive the ambivalence of the sub-genre’s conventions and figures. The Girl with all the Gifts’ grotesque and carnivalesque aesthetics and discourse, that can also be related to the eco-critical approach of genre film, thereby inscribes zombie fiction and the zombie figure within the realm Church explores, that of modern, self-aware, subversive and ambivalent horror.