I Kill Giants

(c) 2017 1492 Pictures

Theatrical release poster

Directed by Anders Walter

Produced by

Chris Columbus

Michael Barnathan

Joe Kelly

Nick Spicer

Kyle Franke

Kim Magnusson

Adrian Politowski

Martin Metz

Screenplay by Joe Kelly

Based on I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly & Ken Niimura

Starring

Madison Wolfe

Imogen Poots

Sydney Wade

Rory Jackson

Zoe Saldana

Music by Laurent Perez Del Mar

I Kill Giants is an extraordinary movie that utterly defies classification. Based on the 2008 graphic novel of the same name by Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura, it’s a coming-of-age story, a monster movie, a horror picture, a buddy flic, and none of the above.

The central character is a middle school misfit named Barbara, a sullen and disaffected girl who is into Dungeons and Dragons, a 1909 Philadelphia Phillies pitcher named Coveleski*, and who has a fantasy world creeping into her reality featuring giants and titans. It is up to her to protect her New Jersey town from them. This difficult role is played by then-14-year-old Madison Wolfe, who brings extraordinary depth and plausibility to Barbara.

She meets Sophie, a lonely stranger in a strange land from Leeds, UK (“Nobody knows what a Leeds is**—they’ve only heard of London”). Through her interactions with Sophie, we gradually learn the inner workings of Barbara’s mind—and the real monsters in her life.

Barbara spends much of her time divining signs and placing wards and setting up traps against the day the giants attack. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of such projects, revealing both her obsessiveness, and the fact that this has been going on for some time.

The viewer gets to see the giants, although it’s not clear if anyone other than Barbara and the audience can see them. She has a weapon, a magic Thor hammer named Coveleski, that is properly impressive when she uses it on a titan, but when she brandishes as a schoolyard bully is a rather pathetic small bone lashed to a six-inch stick.

Along the way, her friend, loved ones, and other who want to help let her down, but like Barbara, all want to help her defeat her monsters. She doesn’t give up, and neither to they.

Barbara, scared out of her wits, does face her monsters, both real and…imagined?

It’s a very genuine, human story, unaffected and honest. It never was a popular movie, but it’s one people might still be watching a century from now, because there will always be Barbaras in our lives.

And Giants.

• Really existed. Harry Coveleski. Pitched three winning games in a five set series against the New York Giants, earning the nickname of “The Giant Killer”.

** Leeds is near…well, never mind. It’s not actually near anything. It’s almost exactly half way between London and Scotland.