I Kill Giants

Barbara Thorson is a nightmare to deal with, and I say that with the utmost affection. She wears plastic bunny ears as a permanent accessory, carries a Norse-inscribed warhammer in a heart-shaped purse, and spends her afternoons mixing foul-smelling "potions" to trap giants along the rocky coast of Long Island. If you met her in the hallway of a middle school, you’d probably walk the other way. But in Anders Walter’s 2017 film I Kill Giants, she is the only thing standing between her town and total annihilation—at least, that’s what she tells herself.

I watched this film on a rainy Tuesday while eating a slightly stale blueberry muffin, and honestly, the damp, gray atmosphere of the movie perfectly matched the crumbs on my sweater. It’s one of those "quiet" movies that slipped through the cracks during the mid-2010s rush of YA adaptations, largely because it refused to play by the rules of the genre. It’s not The Hunger Games, and it’s certainly not Harry Potter, even if it was produced by Chris Columbus, the man who gave us the first two Potter films.

More Than a Monster Hunt

The film thrives on the razor-thin edge between fantasy and psychological collapse. Madison Wolfe delivers a performance that should have made her a household name. As Barbara, she isn't "quirky" in that polished, Hollywood-child-actor way; she is prickly, defensive, and genuinely strange. When she’s not staring down the horizon for impending doom, she’s clashing with her older sister, Karen (played with a weary, heartbreaking patience by Imogen Poots, who I recognize from the frantic horror of 28 Weeks Later).

The arrival of a new friend, Sophia (Sydney Wade), and a concerned school counselor, Mrs. Mollé (Zoe Saldaña), starts to peel back the layers of Barbara’s fortress. Zoe Saldaña is particularly refreshing here. Released right in the middle of her massive run as Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was a shock to see her playing a grounded, empathetic human without a drop of green body paint. She brings a steadying warmth to a film that often feels like it’s about to spin off into a stormy void.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Indie

So, why haven't you heard of this? I Kill Giants is a classic case of "bad timing." It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 but didn't get a wide release until 2018, which happened to be right around the time A Monster Calls was dealing with almost identical subject matter. Both films use high-concept fantasy as a surrogate for terminal illness and grief, but while the former was a big-budget tear-jerker, I Kill Giants felt like a scrappy indie.

The studio, perhaps unsure of how to market a "fantasy" movie where the monsters might just be in the kid's head, opted for a "day-and-date" release. This meant it hit a handful of theaters and VOD services simultaneously. In the pre-pandemic era, that was often a death knell for a film's cultural footprint. It was dumped into the digital bargain bin before it even had a chance to breathe, which is a shame because the CGI work on the giants—when they do appear—is hauntingly beautiful. They look like ancient, rotting forests come to life, far more creative than the shiny, plastic monsters we see in $200 million blockbusters.

Why It Matters Now

In our current era of "trauma-core" cinema, where every horror or fantasy movie is secretly about a character’s past, I Kill Giants feels ahead of its time. It doesn't treat Barbara's imagination as a whimsical escape; it treats it as a survival tactic. The film asks: what happens when the world gives a child a burden so heavy they have to invent a giant just to have something they can actually fight?

The script was written by Joe Kelly, who also wrote the original graphic novel, and you can feel that DNA in every scene. It’s a literal translation of a very specific, jagged emotion. It doesn't have the "polished-to-death" feel of a streaming-service original. It’s messy and wet and smells like salt air. The ending doesn't offer a magic wand to fix the trauma, and that's exactly why it works. It’s a drama that respects its audience enough to let them be sad.

I Kill Giants is a rare bird—a fantasy film that finds its greatest power in reality. It’s a beautiful, somber discovery for anyone who felt like an outsider in school or anyone who ever built a wall to keep the world out. Seek it out on whatever platform is currently hosting it; it’s a giant-sized story trapped in a small-scale release, and it deserves to be seen.

I left the film feeling like I needed to go hug my family and maybe buy a pair of bunny ears. It’s a gut-punch that leaves you feeling a little more capable of facing your own monsters, whether they’re thirty stories tall or just sitting quietly in a hospital room. Don't let this one stay forgotten.