Zombi Child is in Berlin cinemas now. Photo: Grandfilm
There’s an eerie beauty in this time-jumping horror, but an oblique approach to storytelling lets it down.
French provocateur Bertrand Bonello follows up his 2016 terrorism-themed thriller Nocturama by exploring the origins of zombie myths with his new film, Zombi Child. Shuffling between 1960s Haiti where a man is brought back from the dead to work on sugarcane fields, and a modern-day upper-class all-girls boarding school in Paris where a Haitian girl confesses an ancient family secret to her new friends, this cerebral slow-burn is uniquely intriguing and frustrating in equal parts.
Influenced by the story of Clairvius Narcisse, a Haitian man who claimed to have been turned into a zombie by ancient voodoo practices, the director abstractedly addresses colonialist tensions with his bi-temporal narrative framework. There’s an eerie beauty throughout, but the time-hopping structure often stifles momentum, leaving you with the feeling that a less stilted and oblique approach to the storytelling might have elevated this fascinating premise to something more memorable.
Zombi Child / Directed by Bertrand Bonello (France 2019), with Louise Labeque, Wislanda Louimat. Starts October 08.