Zombi Child

The director himself has said Zombi Child is a "horror" movie, but I think this is really true only in the most literal sense. Bonello filmed much of the movie on location in Haiti and the rest, presumably, in France. This fact of production - filming scenes that take place in 1962 Haiti, and some that take place in a contemporary Haiti which doesn't seem to have changed much; and filming most of the movies contemporary moments in modern France - encapsulates the movie's thematic intent. The latter are firmly rooted in colonialism, the ongoing legacy of slavery, and the cultural dialectic between assimilationism and the fierce preservation of traditionalism (arguably, two different kinds of survival, which is also a core theme: surviving the multi-generational damage of colonial )oppression.

If this all sounds deep, it is. This is a brief film, around 85 minutes, and the first 60 contain very little of what could be considered horror in the sense of "horror movie." The horror in the first two thirds of the movie is purely thematic and a historical. It isn't until the last part of the movie where Zombi Child's oversimplified classification of a horror movie becomes evident. In other words, those going into this movie looking for a traditional zombie flick are likely to be disappointed. It's really more of a drama in which certain horror elements come into play, but almost purely as metaphor.

In Haiti of 1962 a man is forced into slave labour. Modern days, a girl in an exclusive boarding school is trying to fit in. When she reveals the truth about her family origins a chain of events leads to a terrifying encounter that bring the past and the present together in a disturbing and dangerous way.

ZOMBI CHILD is a strange beast of static camera work and incomprehensible storytelling. But the most surprising thing about it is that the film works. By defying all the plot standards of modern film making it becomes unpredictable.

Switching between time frames, a disorderly Haiti of the past century and an orderly life of upper class French teenagers, it is hard to tell where the movie is going. And what is it trying to tell? Who are the real zombies? The ones under a voodoo curse who escape within an inch of their life, or the french youths confined in a jail-like school, forced to follow the traditions they don't believe in? Is it about the irrelevance of the past, no matter how important and treasured it seems? My guess is as good as yours.

Bottom line - ZOMBIE CHILD is a mess. It also makes it unique. And not a reason to skip it if you love French cinema!

Yes, true to the old style zombies this movie just trudges along. A '60s Haitian worker decades earlier in the storyline is purposefully given Pufferfish tetrodotoxin with an abrading additive through his skin. He dies, sort of, perhaps just heart rate suspension, anyway he's buried then dug up to work as slave "Zombie" style labor in a sugar plantation. Decades later a young female relative is in a French school where she tells the tale of voodoo practice in Haiti which eventually plays into turning our storyline into a "misadventure". Lots of jumping back 'n' forth between the two locations/periods. Good accuracy in the basic narrative, but drags & ending is a little weird.

The zombie film has come a long way and has returned to the beginning: from the movies about slaves who worked in cane fields, it went through all kinds of cannibal gore and splatter, to finally go back to its origins, such as "Atlantique", a return to social issues, telling the story of modern young slaves in Africa. This other attempt remained halfway. For a good while, I thought, "This may be the one that would set the record straight". I also found it interesting, for its respectful description of a (fascistoid) school of privileged girls in Paris, and of the girls themselves, as pleasant, intelligent and normal beings. A few scenes, such as the insubstantial class about the French revolution, were distracting from the main subject. But the "main subject", which seemed to be the encounter of two cultures in the 21st century, based on the story of a real zombie (that of the Haitian Clairvius Narcisse, who claimed while being alive that he had been a victim of zombification), seen through the eyes of Narcisse's granddaughter, a girl who survived the 2010 earthquake in Haiti... that is not, in fact, the "main subject." The "main subject" is about a girl who is desperate to meet up with her lover Pablo to make love until she is dry, but the girl disguises her tickle with cheesy declarations of love as in the worst romance novel, which we have to listen to every time Narcisse's story advances a little, because it is she who will take us to the "scène de rigueur" of cheap supernatural horror, which, as in "The Serpent and the Rainbow", almost erases all good intentions, a collapse rounded off with a song by Rogers & Hammerstein. Anyway ... that's a shame, but maybe it is asking too much from Bertrand Bonello...

P. S. In the case of Craven's "The Serpent and the Rainbow", we knew the horror fest would happen in any moment, so although it weakens the movie a bit, it was a typical horror movie "a la Craven", and a very good one.

Although the last twenty minutes are breathless, the introduction languishes and lasts about eighty minutes. Thus, in order to appreciate the very ending, you'll have to be patient... very patient...