Zombi Child

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.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Zombie Child is printed on a single Blu-ray disc which includes the feature film and all special features. On the inside of the case is a quick note from Film Movement about why they chose this feature for distribution, and another quick note from the director, an excerpt from an interview where he talks about the film’s themes.

Zombi Child is presented in 1080p high-def video and was shot in a digital format utilizing a RED Monstro camera, with Leitz SUMMILUX-C lenses. Scenes shot during the day, or interior nighttime scenes lit by candlelight, look great. Colors are fully realized and look vibrant. Skin tones like health and fine details are present. Nighttime scenes shot outside are another matter and make up a lot of Zombi Child. They are shot day-for-night and, boy, are they are ugly. Mind-bogglingly ugly. I’m sure it could be argued that seeing what is clearly a sun-shining summer sky juxtaposed with a dark evening gives it a surrealistic nightmare quality, but I’m not falling for it. I’ve seen day-for-night used to great effect before (Jordan Peele’s Nope comes to mind), but this ain’t Nope. Beyond the issues of seeing what is clearly sunlight casting full shadows across the ground, the artificially blackened sky is lousy with color banding, like a rainbow made of fifty shades of black and gray.

The audio options present on the Zombi Child Blu-ray are either a lossless LPCM 2.0 French stereo option, or 5.1 surround option through Dolby TrueHD. This is wild, but for a movie made in 2019, and not, say, 1953, I’m going to say use the stereo option because the surround option is dreadful. Dreadful!

With both the surround option and the stereo option, the front soundstage presents zero issues. It is clear in dialogue, music and ambient effects are mixed in at the proper levels. Everything sounds great and right where it needs to be. It’s the rear soundstage that’s the issue. It feels like the front channels and the rear channels were designed by two different engineers. The rear soundstage receives no music from the score and ambient effects that make their way back feel so arbitrary. A windy sound outside will produce no sound from the rears, but we move inside and now the rears are dully hissing a bizarre sort of white noise. This movie had me convinced it was my sound system, so I moved it over to another sound system—moved from an 11.1.4 to a 5.1—and the issues were present on both.

And while this may not be the disc’s fault and may just be an issue with compatibility, the subtitles didn’t work on my primary Blu-ray player (a Panasonic DP-UB820), so I had to move it over to my PS5 for the story-review portion of this write-up. I moved it back over to the DP-UB820 for accuracy on A/V technical specs and grading. For anyone with my player, though, which is pretty popular, be warned that the subtitles may not work for you.

The only real special feature to be found here is audio commentary from the film’s director, Bertrand Bonello. Other than that, there is a trailer for Zombi Child and two other films, Child of the Sky (directed by Phillip Montgomery) and Coma (also directed by Bonello).

• Audio Commentary featuring Bertrand Bonello
• Trailers

It’s not very often that I’m so roundly disappointed by a Blu-ray release, but Zombi Child was such a frustrating experience all around, the film itself was half-baked and felt incomplete, the 5.1 sound mix was atrocious, the subtitle option presented with incompatibility issues I’d never experienced before, the special features were virtually nonexistent outside of an audio commentary. It's a tough one to recommend so if you're curious maybe rent or stream it first before considering a blind buy. At best, Worth A Look