FILM: Zombi Child (2019, Bertrand Bonello)

Following its premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, French drama Zombi Child is currently showing on the streaming service MUBI. The narrative cuts between two storylines. One is set in Haiti in 1962, and sees a man named Clairvius (Mackenson Bijou) be brought back from the dead to work in the sugarcane fields. The other is set in modern-day France, and sees a Haitian teenager Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat) is brought into a sorority at the all-girls boarding school which she now attends.

PROS

• Director and screenwriter Bertrand Bonello proves himself to be talented at crafting the slow build-up, suggesting early on that there is a calamity waiting to happen, before depicting the everyday life of the boarding school students with an underlying sense of simmering tension and menace, which gradually builds.
• There is a further good sense of tension that is created by the sense of mystery as to the connection between the two storylines in the narrative, as well as the somewhat unsettling fascination that Mélissa’s classmates have with her.
• Cinematographer Yves Cape does frames this film beautifully, embellishing the sense of wealth that comes with the boarding school with some wide shots of the ground, the beauty of rural Haiti with some lovely landscape shots, and does great work with his use of lighting, particularly in dimly lit interior scenes which feel particularly atmospheric and eerie.

CONS

• The narrative is altogether very disjointed, thanks to the fact that the scenes set in Haiti, 1962 come sporadically, getting less focus than modern-day France and often feeling somewhat shoehorned in, with the events and characters of these scenes getting far less development and focus than those in France, thereby having less weight to them.
• The final shocking revelations of the climax serve the purpose of tying the two narrative threads together, but that final 10 minutes or so (out of 100 minutes) is altogether quite anti-climactic and rushed, lacking the shock factor which the revelations should have. Ultimately that reflects the fact that this film has two intriguing narrative threads which never reach their full potential, due to the fact that 100 minutes is not quite long enough for such a narrative.

VERDICT: 6/10