I Kill Giants - C

​Quick Hit: About what you’d expect.

Kids in the movies generally experience things in two ways. Either they get direct experiences with things about life that suck – think Charlie (divorce) in Santa Clause or Charlie (poverty) in Willy Wonka – or they regress and confront things in a fantastical format. Sometimes these converge – if you look at the first two, don’t they both seem a bit fantastic? But recently movies have started to form that show just how resilient kids are in another way – by regressing (or progressing, depending on the way you look at things) into fantasy worlds that allow them to process what is going on, generally, death.
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Enter I Kill Giants, a film about a young girl, Barbara (Madison Wolfe), somewhere in the Northeast. She’s living in house, seemingly only with her brother – fond of violent video games, and her stretched thin older sister. Barbara, a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, has a job that’s stretching her thin as well. She protects her little town from Giants – huge stony creatures that come in different varieties and can crush you with a single step. But there’s more going on with Barbara than meets the eye – as evidenced by new school psychiatrist Mrs. Mollé (Zoe Saldana). 

When I Kill Giants does things right, it does them really well. The opening scene is a superb setup – Barbara racing through the darkened forest, denim jacket and flurouscent pink flowing, with time taken to focus on a mushroom and a jelly like mixture to spread on a plant. It’s absolutely gorgeous, as are most of the scenes where Barbara is totally alone. Madison Wolfe, who nothing bad can be said about her performance, really takes these moments and runs with them (no pun intended). She gives Barbara a depth of character that the writing just doesn’t. I really like the quiet scenes that eventually develop between her and her immigrant friend Sophia, because they show that most kids try to help each other despite the outliers.

However, a lot of these fantasy elements start to feel a bit stretched thin because of the real life elements. There’s just not enough of them to truly hold you straight, and the ones that are there don’t quite seem realistic enough. It’s fairly obvious where the movie is going, even if first time director Anders Walter holds off for nearly 2/3rds the movie. And it inevitably leads to questions – where are the other adults? Where is the government assistance? How is the school just letting this young girl be this way? Obviously there has to be more to the story, but it gets lost in the background amongst scenes of Barbara’s sister and the bully subplots, which feel unnecessary.
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Then there’s the finally, which feels a bit bungled. I’m going to move into spoiler territory here, so be warned!
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The Titan looks a lot like if you mixed the monster from Colossal and the tree from A Monster Calls and let them have a mutant giant child. And there isn’t much to this battle besides one of two swings of a giant hammer. It’s mostly dialogue, and that’s not wrong, but it does feel fairly anticlimactic comparatively. And the tearful reunion with her mother doesn’t carry the emotional impact it should, because there hasn’t been much connection there, compared to something like the aforementioned A Monster Calls.

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One thing that I Kill Giants has going for it is the fact that it is riddled with talented female cast members, and that allows for a distinctive female perspective to be felt throughout the film. Just always like to highlight when we flip things on their head to allow the girls to shine too.

So, in conclusion, though I Kill Giants didn’t wreck me the way A Monster Calls did, there are still some moments that are worth watching throughout. If you like fantasy, you could do worse, even if you could do better. I’m giving it a “C”.

For more on this film, check out IMDB.