Review: Zombi Child

Image courtesy of Film Movement.

Bertrand Bonello's "Zombi Child" is in turns compelling and frustrating, hypnotic and languid. There's a reasonable amount to recommend here, but the film never quite coheres into a satisfying whole, even if some of its various parts are transfixing.

The picture opens in Haiti in 1962, where a group of men walk around as if they're - you guessed it - zombies, but not the type you'd expect to see in a George Romero film. No, they're not trying to eat human flesh, but rather ambling around without appearing to notice their surroundings. However, they are able to work, and have entered into a type of slavery with white colonialists. One particular man (Mackenson Bijou) will end up playing a significant role in both of the film's timelines.

Then, we cut to the present at a girls boarding school in France, where a young woman of Haitian descent named Melissa (Wislanda Louimat) is trying to gain entry into a sorority of young women, all of whom are white. The group is led by Fanny (Louise Labeque), who has her own side story - albeit one barely glimpsed - in which she's obsessed with a young man named Pablo - whose hobbies include sitting on a motorcycle shirtless in the woods, and who doesn't seem to have the same amount of affection for her.

We cut back and forth between the two narratives. The one set in Haiti is more compelling, mostly due to the film's eerie synth soundtrack and the moody, hypnotic photography that it accompanies. Much of the Haiti-set scenes take place at night, and include gorgeous shots of trees swaying in the wind with a darkened sky as a backdrop. Although these scenes move at a slower pace, they are entrancing.

On the other hand, the scenes at the boarding school aren't quite as compelling. There, we're treated to long scenes of teachers expostulating on everything from Balzaz novels to the French Revolution. In another film, they might have worked, but here merely slow everything down. And the initiation of Melissa into the group of girls is also only intermittently interesting. Some of the girls begin to find Melissa's behavior odd - such as her making growling and grunting noises in the bathroom late at night - but this plot thread is never given a satisfying culmination.

The film's final quarter is the most compelling as Fanny seeks out Melissa's aunt, a mambo who has fled Haiti and lives elsewhere in France. Her mission is to get a spell cast that would combine Pablo's soul with hers, but the mambo warns her not to get mixed up with voodoo for frivolous reasons. The path down which this story leads is unsettling, psychedelic and engrossing. It's too bad Bonello didn't focus more on this than the scenes at the boarding school.

Bonello's films often carry with them a sense of mystique - take for instance the interesting but also somewhat opaque "Nocturama" - or be more straightforward, such as his "Saint Laurent" biopic. "Zombi Child" has its flaws - and it's certainly not for everyone - but there's enough there that it might compel the adventurous viewer. It didn't exactly work for me, but parts of it piqued my curiosity. It's certainly unlike anything else in theaters at the moment.