I Kill Giants is a 2018 fantasy about a young girl who struggles through life by escaping into a fantasy life of magic and monsters.
It’s hard not to feel a sense of familiarity to Anders Walter‘s innocent and genuinely earnest I Kill Giants, a tale that has certainly seen its roots in film long before. There is something almost historic about the combining of children and giants in story, the presence of these magical humongous creatures long spun in fables and literature, serving as metaphor for all kinds of hurdles for youth to overcome. The recent and wonderfully enchanting A Monster Calls and The BFG only two of many such modern movies that have taken to giving deeper meaning and emotional bonding for younger audiences, dealing with some very adult themes. So too is this adaptation of J.M. Ken Niimura and Joe Kelly‘s ten-year-old graphic novel, a sincere film that works hard to be so.
Young teen Barbara (Madison Wolfe) is a lonely soldier in a war only she is part of. With no friends and happy to be free of them, she is wholly entrenched in a world of fantasy games and books, but more so, as a defender of great danger the people of her Long Island village are unaware of, that of marauding giants skulking in the nearby forest. It’s a tireless job, one that requires clever bait traps and concoctions of potions, struggling to prevent what some harbingers are claiming will be the worst giant attack yet. Then arrives Sophia (Sydney Wade), a new girl from England who finds a kind of kinship in Barbara and wishes to join the fight, also recognizing the severity of bullying she takes at school. Meanwhile, Barbara’s older sister Karen (Imogen Poots), working as her family breadwinner, tries to keep things together as school psychologist Mrs. Molle (Zoe Saldana) tries to break through Barbara’s thickening walls in hopes of helping the girl deal with something she is clearly hiding from.
Barbara is the youngest at home, her slightly older brother a complete opposite, playing video games with his friends that she thinks has stifled his creativity, causing friction in a house already unstable. School is no better and it’s easy to see why she escapes to such distant fantasies, wearing tattered rabbit ears and relying on the spin of many-sides dice to dictate her actions. Walter’s is careful to keep the story always on Barbara’s perspective though, and as such, allows the story to be very accessible to the target audience and as such feels warm and inviting, Barbara perhaps an obvious character but at the same time not so dark and manipulative as to be contrived. Walter’s begins the film with a stirring start, the young girl already tracking a giant, swaths of fog-laden trees alive with echoes of some unseen beast, setting a deeply authentic start and one that anyone who as a kid spent time exploring their own backyard worlds in search of mythical monsters will surely find fondness in watching.
What probably works best is how strong Barbara is in the face of such turmoil, even as so many seem to push her down, especially against token hallway thug Taylor (Rory Jackson), who is almost obsessed with targeting the girl. Wolfe is well cast and delivers a bittersweet turn on the archetype, making it easy to get hooked in her world. She’s a genuine little hero. Poots is equally good as her sister, a cooly sympathetic young woman who is trading in a lot to keep balance in a house clearly not while Saldana reaches a little too deeply, forced into corners the story of a child maybe spinning out of control feels necessary to have.
Filled with plenty of awesome monsters, Barbara’s odyssey is a troubling but often visually stunning one, and while there are great gaps in the momentum, it’s hard not to appreciate the sentiment. For young viewers, this will surely be loaded with captivating moments and maybe even inspire some conversations, even if some moments might surely be too much. Slightly flawed and a little overlong, this is nonetheless a pleasant little bit of magic that should do what it intends.