I-Kill-Giants
This movie follows Barbara, a young girl who must protect her town from destruction-craving giants who threaten to take everything away from her. She must not only fight the massive monsters but also deal with the fact that no one in her life believes her and how that affects her relationships. The movie itself is a deep dive into the mind of a girl who is simply dealing with the loss of someone very dear to her.
Barbara is a young, imaginative, and clearly damaged girl. She is isolated in her home life as well as her school life. When she meets Sophia, a new girl in town, she decides to trust her and reveals her secret life as a giant killer and defender of the town. Through the conversations Barbara has with Sophia, we are given a good description and explanation of the world that Barbara has created in her head and the one she believes she lives in.
The most striking element of this movie is the characterization. The actors do a very good job of turning themselves into the characters they play and filling in the roles that characters have in the movie. From Barbara to Sophia to Karen, Barbara’s sister who takes care of her family on her own, the characters are all unique and their presence in the movie elevates the deeper meaning behind the film’s core idea. The way Barbara deals with her issues at home and realizes that she cannot seem to rely on anyone gives us a true insight into her mind. She is deeply hurt and as a result, creates a scenario where she must stop the giants from destroying the one person she yearns to protect.
This makes Barbara the girl in town that no one believes, and she begins to consider all the townspeople to be stupid or ignorant, placing a heavy-duty upon herself to safeguard her hometown. We learn through the course of the movie that Barbara is simply a girl too afraid to let go of her family, a girl who truly cares for people, and a person who will stop at nothing to kill the giants that threaten them.The film is full of highly emotional scenes as well as some action-packed fight scenes that are choreographed well. The highlight of the movie, however, falls in the plot and the ability of the movie to reveal little of Barbara’s true motives and mental well-being until the very end. Whenever it seems like we are about to get some information about what has led Barbara down this road the sound in the movie just drowns out, keeping the ending a mystery till its eventual arrival.
The giants are visually striking and the lore that Barbara has put behind them is breathtaking, giving us different types of giants capable of doing many different things. They never reveal themselves to any other character and this is what allows the viewers to see the possibility that all of them are simply figments of Barbara’s vivid imagination, something we know she possesses from the early scenes and her explanation of the lore of the giants. She becomes so engulfed in it that her relationships with other people quickly take a bad turn. It is almost as if the giants are a metaphor for Barbara’s greatest fear and to overcome them, she must defeat them all with her trusty hammer.
This movie is a good watch. Not a spectacular film that is sure to take your breath away, but a movie that can force you to sit back and just take in all the emotions as we see Barbara cope with her life. To the right person, this movie can speak out to their own experiences they may have faced, yet, it is one that will not be easily understood by every viewer.