It’s
a matter of scale. There are plenty of giants in fairy tales and literature (Jack
and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, the BFG), but not so many in film—and
arguably none that are iconic to any extent. That could finally change in the
digital age. Barbara Thorson would like to introduce us to the giants she
fights, but just how real they might be remains an open question throughout
Anders Walters’ I Kill Giants (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.
Thorson
does not have any friends, but she believes it is better that way. She has
accepted a higher calling: protecting her coastal Long Island hamlet from giants.
Naïve kids would just get in the way. Nevertheless, plucky but lonely Sophia,
who has just moved from England is determined to be her friend. Not even Thorson’s
crazy talk about giants will dissuade her. Thorson reluctantly starts teaching
her tag-along methods of protection against the mythical hulks, while trying
not to get too close, because all the signs point towards a brewing crisis.
IKG shares quite a bit
in common with A Monster Calls, but
it is less manipulative and melodramatic than Bayona’s tear-jerker. At times, Thorson
is a hard kid to love, but she is forceful and proactive. Screenwriter Joe Kelly
adapted his own graphic novel (created with artist J.M. Ken Niimura), so it
rather makes sense how easily the film exploits our expectations of what a
comic book superhero should be like.
Young
Madison Wolfe and Sydney Wade are also quite compelling as Thorson and Sophia,
respectively. Zoe Saldana looks like she is trying too hard to be cool and
sensitive as the sympathetic school shrink, but Imogen Poots is quietly
devastated as Karen Thorson, the beleagured older sister forced to take
responsibility for her family.
