Zombi Child

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.

This was a film that I debated whether to see in the theater or not. I don't normally watch trailers as I like to come in blind to movies, but I did catch part of this one. I'm assuming it was when I was at the Gateway Film Center with my girlfriend and I can't be on my phone. This one as I said intrigued me and with the title, I thought it could possible be horror. The synopsis is a man is brought back from the dead in the hell of sugar cane plantations. 55 years later, a Haitian teenager tells her friends her family secret - not suspecting that it will push one of them to commit the irreparable.

We start this movie where we're seeing someone prepare the ingredients for something. It turns out to be a voodoo ritual and we see that it kills Clairvius Narcisse (Mackenson Bijou). This is all happening in Haiti and we see what their funerals are like. On top of that though, his wife is taking it hard. Things go a bit dark when Clairvius is removed from his casket and he's become a zombi.

This isn't in the sense like we're used to with Night of the Living Dead or The Walking Dead. This is a throwback to movies like I Walked with a Zombie where they're mindless creatures that are undead. He's taken to work on a sugar cane plantation with others that are like him.

The movie then shifts to the present in Paris. Our main character here is Fanny (Louise Labeque). She goes to a special school for children that are bright, but it also for students who have parents that are recognized for important awards. She is longing for break so she can see the 'love of her life', Pablo (Sayyid El Alami). She is in a sorority of sorts with three other girls and has befriended Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat). She is originally from Haiti, but due to the earthquake in 2010, she relocated to France. Her parents didn't make it so she lives with her aunt.

The rest of the group accepts her, but they think there's something not quite right about her. This is coupled with seeing what happened to Clairvius back in the 60's after the horrific event that happened to him. These two time periods have quite a bit in common and everything comes to a head when one of these girls as the synopsis says, does something that will change her life forever.

Alright, now the first thing I need to lead off here saying is that for about 80% of this movie, I wasn't going to do this review. It is listed on the Internet Movie Database that this is a fantasy film, which it is. I would even say that drama probably would fit as well. The event that is alluded to in the synopsis though was extremely creepy to the point where I had to write this. Due to that section and there being zombis in this throughout as well as Netflix listing this as horror, I decided it warranted this review.

I should cover that part first. We keep learning things about voodoo throughout this movie, so that shouldn't come as a shock. A ritual is performed and it is coupled with a character explaining the dangers of doing something like this. I like that they're giving the history of the religion and even more so when they introduce the character of Baron Samedi (Néhémy Pierre-Dahomey). I first learned of this entity from James Bond, as there's a villain that takes on this name. It is also a villain in season 3 of American Horror Story: Coven. What they do with him in this movie is scary if I'm honest and I like the flamboyant nature that is given as well.

What I found interesting with the zombi aspect is that it really isn't handled in horror for the most part. There is one of the girls who is freaked out by noises that Mélissa makes in her sleep and has a nightmare she's attacked. Other than that though, I saw the zombis as more of an allegory of slavery. They're brought back to work the plantations and do not get paid. The rich reap the benefits of this. This didn't click for me until the last few minutes, but then I started thinking back and it made sense. I even like that Mélissa's mother was fighting against the corrupt government, which in turn earns her daughter's way into the school she is at as well. The movie does state information about zombis in Haiti before the credits. I'm not sure how accurate what they're providing, but it does intrigue me to see if there's legit studies or data out there.

The only other thing story and deeper meaning wise I wanted to cover would have to be the correlating this school and its girls to what we're seeing in the past. They're all quite privileged. Listening to Fanny as an adult made me cringe, but I can't be too hard as it is thoughts I had when I was younger. She believes that she loves Pablo and he breaks it off with her. This sends her into depression. She doesn't think she can live, but in the grand scheme, she'll be fine. Seeing what they're worrying about while watching Clairvius trying to survive with what happened to him was an intriguing duality for sure.

I do have to admit that I thought the movie was a bit boring. It wasn't to the point where I hated it. It just took too long for the two stories to correlate back. I found the story around Clairvius to be much more interesting until how it collides with the present. That scene that went horror had me glued to the screen and really brought me back into the fold. I thought the ending worked to what they were building toward as well.

The acting in the movie I thought was fine. Labeque I thought really embodied the character she was playing. It is kind of annoying, but that really fits to who she is supposed to be. Louimat I thought was much stronger. She's an outsider. She doesn't necessarily care to make friends, but given the opportunity, she takes it. This is also the downfall by revealing aspects of her past. I found it interesting through a conversation with I'm assuming her aunt. Bijoy I thought was really good in his performance, especially as a voodoo zombie. Pierre-Dahomey though stole the show for me though. His performance was Baron was creepy and just great. The rest of the cast was fine for what was needed in building the story.

There weren't really a lot in the way of effects, but it wasn't really that important. During the scene that made this horror for me, I thought it was great. Seeing the character and how she was acting was amazing. I also like what they did with her eyes as it made it even creepier to be honest. The cinematography was also really good. It gave us the duality of how beautiful Haiti's countryside is to the horrors of what is happening there. On the flipside, how drab the school in Paris is with how important the teachers are making out to what they're doing is.

I also have to give props to the music selections. We do get some pop and rap music from France, which helped the feel of the realism for the young women. What I really have to give credit for is the voodoo music we're getting. It has that African vibe to it, which makes a lot of sense. Even more so though it helps to ramp up the tension for the climax as well.

Now with that said, I ended up really enjoying this movie. I like the duality of what happened in the past in Haiti and the social implications there and pairing that with these girls in a proper Parisian school. Where the movie ends up going had me hooked, but I'll be honest, it did lose me for a good stretch as I was bored and it took too long to correlate. The little effects we got were good and the cinematography helped as well as the soundtrack. The acting was also really good as well. With that said, this is an above average in my opinion, but really worth a viewing. I will warn you this is from France, so I watched it with subtitles on. If that's an issue I would avoid this.

7.5/10

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.

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.

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...