In a Boarding School, a Mysterious Student’s Secret Brings Potential Consequences

Louise Labeque (left) and Wislanda Louimat in "Zombi Child"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

*Although I've been catching up on some classic movies over the last few weeks ever since the movie theaters temporarily closed, I'm going to take a break from them every so often to dive into the indie films that have been made available in the Jacob Burns Film Center's virtual screening room.

The opening scene to writer-director Bertrand Bonello’s drama, “Zombi Child,” is one that brings us into a story that promises to be unsettling and unpredictable at every turn.  Through an act of voodooism, we go from a man’s final moments to his funeral to his entrance into a supernatural existence, and we’re left wondering the deeper implications that this will have on the rest of the movie.  It’s through this beginning that we’re introduced to the concept of a zombie from a fresh angle, and it’s fascinating to witness.

At a boarding school in France, Fanny (Louise Labeque) and her friends Salomé (Adilé David), Romy (Ninon François), and Adèle (Mathilde Riu) connect with a student, Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat), who moved to France after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.  Soon, Fanny will find out that Mélissa’s family practices voodoo and intends to use the rituals for her own gain.

Labeque, Louimat, David, François, and Riu all create a bond that displays their sisterly connection, while also emitting the tension that begins to come out once Mélissa’s secret is revealed.  However, the true power comes from what we see between Labeque and Louimat.  Their performances are what bring us into the story’s dynamic of one character trying to understand something that the other doesn’t believe that the other person can handle.  They never get into heated arguments over their disagreements, but we still feel the uncertainty that mounts between them as they get closer to Fanny possibly making a destructive decision whose actions could cause irreversible repercussions.  The calmness that both of them exhibit does well in having us trying to decipher what they’re pondering as their friendship continues on its unpredictable path towards something neither one of them would ever think could happen.

Bonello’s screenplay constructs a narrative that goes back and forth between Haiti in 1962 and France in the present, with both timelines being equally engaging.  The sequences in Haiti show the haunting spiritual journey of a man who’s brought back from the dead, and these events have us aching to find out how they will tie in with the France timeline.  Meanwhile, the scenes in France offer us a detailed and carefully built view into the lives of the students at the boarding school.  While the events of that timeline might seem low stakes at first, this is a way for us to see the everyday lives of Fanny, her three best friends, and Mélissa before the latter falls into Fanny’s group, having us wonder what the tipping point will be for Fanny’s inquisitiveness into voodoo and how she will use it for her goals.

The transitions between the two timelines heightens the sense of family history being passed down across generations, showing how the actions of one generation can lead to the actions that are taken by future generations, while also displaying how our culture and traditions can shape us into who we become.  And, as the movie goes on, the transitions between the two time periods help increase the tension as we get closer to seeing how these two plots will coalesce and conclude, strengthening the aspect of what happens when the past catches up with you.

The story within the present-day timeline focuses a lot on the troubles that Fanny and Mélissa are experiencing, and as the movie goes on, the narrative soon takes on an unexpected and darkly comical view into first-world problems versus third-world problems, but I won’t go too deep into it, for fear of spoilers.  All I’ll say is it all adds an angle to these characters that I wasn’t anticipating, and it makes their arcs richer.

Bonello melds coming-of-age drama into a low-key sense of dread throughout the film that keeps you hooked into the mystery of the film’s opening and how it bleeds little by little into the events that unfold at the school.  Bonello provides the story with a seamless blend of the natural and the supernatural that unsettles you for the duration of the movie, and it’s the slow progression of the supernatural within the present-day timeline that makes the last 15 minutes of the movie so effective because of how much time you spend with the characters and learning about them.  With Bonello’s approach to his story, he makes “Zombi Child” a new, bold reawakening of the zombie myth.

Grade: A