Zombi Child
The only “zombie” in Zombi Child is Clairvius Narcisse, a real Haitian whom a Harvard researcher claimed had escaped from zombified slavery. In the mid 20th century, Narcisse is said to have worked mindlessly in the cane fields of Haiti for as long as 18 years after having been drugged into a faked death and zombie-like existence by vodou (aka voodoo) practices.
It’s a potentially fascinating story, if largely debunked, but Zombi Child has nothing to add to that bare premise. The film begins in the cane fields, in 1962, and we see Narcisse awaken and escape. The movie checks in with him in extended segments, wandering languidly in an eternal dusk, but the real focus is the present day at an elite girls’ high school in France. There Fanny (Louise Labeque) writes florid letters (heard in voiceover) to her unseen boyfriend and listens to mind-numbing lectures about French history and literature, which are staged in monotonous detail.
Fanny also befriends Melissa (Wislanda Louimat), a Haitian girl whose parents were killed in the 2010 earthquake. The duo and three other girls form a clique, and they wander the school at night and talk and have faintly rebellious thoughts. After an hour and a half of switchbacks between spooky Haiti and dullsville Paris, the not-surprising connection between the story lines is revealed and an absurd and incoherent story line finally kicks in without actually resolving anything before the movie ends.
Zombi Child is from acclaimed French writer-director Bertrand Bonello, and it’s the kind of art film that lets viewers feel superior if they can somehow piece together the Big Ideas that the filmmaker toys with but never actually elucidates. Nods to colonial exploitation, cultural appropriation, the slave trade, racism, and other themes are scattered around Zombi Child like neglected textbooks no one has bothered to crack open. But any grand statement Bonello is making can be constructed only in the viewers’ imagination, because there’s nothing conclusive or especially observant on the screen.
Instead, we’re stuck with a bunch of underdeveloped, unengaging characters who are, in the case of the girls, leading unremarkable lives — save for that out-of-nowhere finale that drives the sputtering movie off a cliff. It is, in short, a pretentious bore that somehow makes some viewers feel smarter for finding a cultural critique that isn’t really there.
If Parasite has taught us anything, it’s that politically intelligent movies that offer trenchant critiques of society don’t have to be oblique and dull. It’s one lesson the schoolgirls in Zombi Child don’t learn.
Grade: F. Not rated but roughly a PG-13. Now available as part of the Sofa Cinema streaming offerings from the Grail Moviehouse website.
Streaming tip: For a beautifully made and often fascinating story set in a girls’ school, check out Amazon Prime’s recent miniseries adaptation of the Australian novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.
