Zombi Child

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.

Zombi Child is told in two alternating timelines. In 1962, we see a man in Haiti named Clairvius (Mackenson Bijou) fall suddenly and some short time later is buried at a funeral. That evening he is dug up by some men who awaken him into a half-dead-half-alive zombi state. He and others are corralled like animals, led to a plantation, and used to perform laborious tasks as slaves. They moan in agony, their existence a curse.

In modern-day France, Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat), who moved from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, becomes friends with Fanny (Louise Labèque). The other kids think Mélissa is a bit odd, but Fanny likes her. She likes the way she dances. Unbeknownst to Fanny, Mélissa harbors a dark secret about her family that ties the two intersecting timelines together.

Zombi Child is one of those frustrating movies that has such an intriguing premise, it's such a disappointment that it never comes together. Haitian culture and voodoo historically get a bad rap on film. Here, you have a movie that wants to present a bit more accuracy to zombis (making sure to drop the "e" at the end, because these supposed undead are not the same as George Romero's creatures), but it never does anything else beyond that. It believes that its premise is strong enough to float an entire movie that has no story.

I've seen comparisons of Zombi Child made to Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie, which is fair on a totally surface level because they both deal with the ritual of resurrection to enslave a victim in their own body, as opposed to the ghoulish figure we have in film now. But I Walked with a Zombie is a crash course in economic filmmaking. It boasts about four times as much story in a significantly shorter overall run time than Zombi Child. In Jacques Tourneur's film, we're introduced to a rich history, both to an island and its inhabitants, their rituals, but also a number of characters, their relationships to each other, and a story that takes twists and turns until it all leads to a shocking ending.

Zombi Child director Bertrand Bonello could take a few lessons from Tourneur. His film has two parts, both of which commit the ultimate cinematic sin by being excruciating in their boredom. One half is the story of an escaped zombi aimlessly wandering scenic locations; the other half is a dull "girls at a boarding school" story that dedicates so much of its time to the tedium of actually being a student at this school. In most other films, when a teacher is giving the kids a lesson, it will either A) Be short and sweet to give us a passing understanding that, hey, these kids are in school and this is what their daily life is like. Or, B) Something the teacher says will be an ominous piece of foreshadowing. Here, it is neither. We simply have to sit through one agonizing lecture after another, as though we had enlisted in some virtual reality simulation where we are the student. Boredom is the emotion most effectively conveyed by this film.

Worse yet, when the film finally discovers itself and takes a turn toward the interesting, the results are unintentionally hilarious. Since this reveal occurs in the final fifteen minutes, I don't want to give too much away, but there's a scene where an evil presence speaks through someone else, and the lip syncing doesn't work correctly. It's like those videos on TikTok with someone mouthing along to a movie quote and doing a really bad job of it. But that's the least of the film's problems. The evil voice, oh lord, the evil voice. Instead of some deep, booming, terrifying voice from another realm, it's this high-pitched, whining cackle, like Dave Chappelle doing his impression of Rick James.

And then it all sort of unceremoniously ends without many crucial questions being answered. There are basic rules for filmmaking and storytelling that are made to be broken, but there's a caveat: You have to know what you're doing. If you're breaking these rules, it has to be for a reason. If you can pull it off, you're a rebel of cinema. You've rewritten these rules and showed what you're capable of. If you don't pull it off, it just looks like you never understood the craft to begin with.

Zombi Child feels so half-assed. There are these momentary glimpses into a better film and what could have been, but it's all on autopilot. We never have any emotional attachment to the story or given a reason to care.

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.

Beginning in Haiti in the early sixties, "Zombi Child" deals with voodoo and is one of the best and most poetic horror films in many a moon. It is obvious from the title and the setting that we are meant to think of a much earlier film with a similar setting but that would appear to be where the comparisons with Jacques Tourneur's "I Walked with a Zombie" ends for in the next scene we are in comtemporary France and a group of schoolgirls are being taught French history in a very white classroom.

What follows is a deliciously unsettling movie that manages to encompass the pains of teenage romance with a tale of the 'undead' as a metaphor for colonialism and it actually works. I can't think of too many examples in recent cinema where two opposing themes have been as beautifully united as they are here. In some ways it's closer to something like "The Neon Demon" or the recent remake of "Suspiria" than it is to Val Lewton. Here is a film with a creeping sense of dread, (we've all seen films in which schoolgirls are not as sweet as they appear to be), and the grand guignol finale is as spooky as a good horror movie should be. It also confirms director Bertrand Bonello as one of the most exciting talents working anywhere today.