Zombi Child

2019 Directed by Bertrand Bonello

Haiti, 1962: A man is brought back from the dead only to be sent to the living hell of the sugarcane fields. In Paris, 55 years later, at the prestigious Légion d’honneur boarding school, a Haitian girl confesses an old family secret to a group of new friends - never imagining that this strange tale will convince a heartbroken classmate to do the unthinkable.

Louise Labèque Wislanda Louimat Katiana Milfort Mackenson Bijou Adilé David Ninon François Mathilde Riu Ginite Popote Néhémy Pierre-Dahomey Sayyid El Alami Saadia Bentaïeb Patrick Boucheron

103 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★

There are any number of horror films about “voodoo” magic and its colonialist underpinnings — Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 “I Walked with a Zombie” remaining the most formative example — but only Bertrand Bonello’s take on the subject includes an oral presentation on the life and times of Rihanna. It would be foolish to expect anything else from the firebrand director behind “House of Pleasures” and “Nocturama,” whose films see history as less of a forward march than an uneasy churn; his work obfuscates clearly delineated temporalities in order to emphasize that while everyone may live in the present the past is never really dead.
As its title suggests, “Zombi Child” finds Bonello taking that idea to its logical and most…
Review by Paul Elliott ★★★½

The outlandish visuals from director Bertrand Bonello in this compelling and interesting movie transitions between the grotesque and the cerebral, and stabilise's on a territory on the edge of horror. It settles on two interlinked timelines and questions how the cultural and political legacy of one country shades and acquaints another. The film appears to divide itself into two equal parts with two fundamentally different storylines before combining to form a single narrative in the fulfilling final act.
The lighting and sound design are atmospheric, and the school itself creates a sufficient amount of surrealism to deliver the bizarre metaphysical aspects in play. At the same time, emblems and moods crisscross with topics of politics and culture. The self-supplied musical score from Bonello helps to accentuate a movie which apprehends the irrepressibility of teenage disaffection, and overall it's victorious enough in establishing a distinctive and affecting ambience while generously developing its unusual relationship to space and time.
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★ 6

Hoop-tober (hopefully), #25:
This is so tremendously similar to a short piece that I wrote while locked in a residential treatment facility, during my senior year of high school (the narrative was legitimately a multigenerational story about Clairvius Narcisse himself, and one of his relatives!) but, alas, that is a lost chronicle -- as is my contemporary Little Red Riding Hood redux -- a sad actuality that I've been trying to come to terms with for years, swept away in the clouds of non-replication and discarded student desktops. Oh well, I could never tell a story as well as maestro Bonello anyway.
Review by Diogo Vale ★★★★½ 1

After the godardian doomed revolutionaries of Nocturama, Bonello asks for a reconsideration of the very concept of revolution - in a classroom of all places. This takes me back to what Régis Debray said in his book about May '68: the counterrevolution was so successful that it's nearly impossible to have a revolution in Europe now, but the African revolutionary movements are well and alive. Perhaps one of the biggest changes in European politics that Marx didn't anticipate was the turn towards social-democracies. Of course, this kind of regime can only successfully exist in a post-industrial society, i.e. in a society that has withdrawn from the industrial competion for the lowest cost of production. This current state of affairs where…
Review by Steph_h ★★½

I was looking forward to a slower and alternative zombie take with an unsettling dreamy atmosphere that I figured this would have and it did but its also kinda boring.. The last half hour or so of this has some great moments though I will give it that, it gets weird, creepy and definitely pulls you into it. It’s also a pretty beautiful looking film.. it is quite dark though if you decide to watch this don’t do it in the room with any lights on... mehhh overall not quite as impressive as his previous film Nocturama ... I think it’s also possible that I may be just not picking up on some of the social commentary in which case maybe somebody smarter than me would like this more ...
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★½ 1

A mixed bag. Bonello can certainly come up with a scene and one can admire his go for broke mentaily. His handling of young cast and shifting power balances is fine as well, yet while one can praise Bonello for not setting for facile white European humanism, this remains a movie about the heritage of European colonialism that can't avoid failing pray to it. Knowing where the booby traps are doesn't mean you are avoiding them.
Review by dirtylaundri ★★ 11

The vastly superior first half plays like the world's most pretentious PRETTY LITTLE LIARS episode - meaning this isn't completely worthless, and if Bonello had embraced the ridiculousness of the premise, especially when it comes to Fanny and her wish to either get rid of or be possessed by her boyfriend (Labeque is a great actress, too), this might've actually turned out to be fun.
But come the fuck on, as a political Zombie film this is a joke, and not a good one, there's not much more here than a (probably well-researched, but who gives a shit) Vice-expose on the post-colonial implications of voodoo. Go watch Fulci's ZOMBI 2 instead.
Review by SylvainL ★★★★ 9

La séquence finale m'a fait vraiment peur, mais en sortant du film on a découvert que ça existe pour vrai, des écoles uniquement pour les filles dont les parents ont reçu la Légion d'honneur, et ça ça m'a fait encore plus peur.
Comment ne pas aimer un film qui se termine avec des statistiques sur le nombre de zombis qui hantent encore Haïti?
Review by preston ★★★½

"Don't take notes, just try to think," says the prof at the very exclusive girls' school built on "national values" - but perhaps it should be 'feel', judging by the one girl whose mind is on a boy ("I miss your kisses") in the midst of all the academic chatter. Horror too is treated academically, with playful ambivalence, the (white) girls tinged with horror iconography - a slo-mo sequence in the communal bathroom echoes Carrie, green goo coming out of one girl's mouth (for a joke) brings up The Exorcist - then suddenly it's not, Bonello doing his own Personal Shopper with a startling irrational streak. Is it because the girl uses voodoo to try and fix her own First…
Review by josh lewis ★★★

"not hell, just as it is."
Review by matt lynch ★★★½

Reclamation.
Review by ethan

yall went to watch zombieland 2 and left this in the dust when it’s far superior... disgusting behaviour

Recent reviews

Review by t_humus ★★★★

loved this
every shot is so perfectly composed
amazing music
and every. single. performance. is stellar
also, such an amazing horror movie too i was so invested and in what i felt was the perfect mindset throughout
Review by Andrew Johnson ★★★½

This is the slowest of slow burns. You basically have to wait until the end of the movie for the freaky-deaky and satisfying payoff. It's not always a compelling path to get there, but it is the vast majority of the time.
The degree of difficulty is high here, as the narrative switches between Haiti in the 1960s, and a mostly dialogue-free jaunt from a "zombi," to France in the present day and a group of catty teenage girls. There is, of course, a link between the two stories, and it's pretty clear on a superficial level what it is early on. But it's not clear how the two threads will actually be brought together, nor is it a small…
Review by HolyMotor ★★

Bonellos Filme, in denen er näher am Genre mit den Genre-Elementen tänzelt und den Plot fröhlich ausfransen lässt (Nocturama, Le Pornographe), sind mir lieber als die Filme, in denen er nur träge um kalten Konzept-Brei herumstapft (Zombi Child, De la guerre).
Review by Nolan Flavin ★★★★

I want a version of Princess and the Frog where Dr. Facilier turns and says, “Fuck your mother.”
Review by LordDescole ★★★★

Zombies have become an integral part of cinema. Over the last decades, the undead developed into the most popular movie monsters of their time. But not all zombies are the same. Most of the time they are ghouls that have risen from their graves, often bodies that have been infected by a virus. But actually the idea comes from somewhere else, from the Caribbean. More precisely: Haiti.
This is exactly where Mélissa and her aunt come from. The young girl goes to a prestigious boarding school for girls, where she becomes friends with Fanny, who is the same age. Mélissa is even accepted into her friend's gang, but is always conspicuous for strange behavior. At the same time we see…
Review by LordDescole ★★★★

Zombies sind mittlerweile nicht mehr aus dem Kino wegzudenken. Über die letzten Jahrzehnte hinweg entwickelten sich die Untoten zu den populärsten Filmmonstern ihrer Zeit. Doch Zombie ist nicht gleich Zombie. Meistens sind es aus den Gräbern gestiegene Ghule, oft auch von Infektionen befallene Körper. Doch eigentlich kommt die Idee von ganz woanders her, nämlich aus der Karibik. Genauer: Haiti.
Genau von dort kommen auch Mélissa und ihre Tante. Das junge Mädchen geht auf ein prestigeträchtiges Mädcheninternat, wo sie sich mit der gleichaltrigen Fanny anfreundet. Mélissa wird sogar in die Gang ihrer Freundin aufgenommen, ist jedoch immer wieder wegen merkwürdigen Verhaltens auffällig. Gleichzeitig sehen wir Bilder aus Haiti, nur über 50 Jahre früher. Dort scheint ein Mann, von einem Fluch besessen…
Review by Sebastian ★★★

goingtothemovies.wordpress.com/2020/10/19/zombi-child/
Review by Natasha C. ★★½

20/31
Another one for Hooptober
Review by Pablo Gazzaneo ★★★★

COMING OUT AGE ANTICOLONIAL USANDO EL MITO DEL ZOMBI VUDU HAITIANO. POR MOMENTOS ME PARECIÓ RE LUCRECIA MARTEL .
GOOGLEEN “ZOMBIES HAITÍ” Y SE VAN A ENCONTRAR CON HISTORIAS ALUCINANTES DE ESCLAVITUD COMBINADAS CON TETRODOTOXIN Y BARBITÚRICOS.
Review by jayets1 ★★★

Filmrausch, dig dcp, OmU
Review by zauberknochen ★★

Kennt ihr das, wenn ein Film euch einfach gar nichts gibt? Diese Filme, die man anschaut, aufnimmt aber die persönlich einfach gar nichts mit einem machen, zu denen man einfach keinen Zugang findet und die an einem völlig unspektakulär abprallen, wie ein Fußball, der gegen eine Wand gekickt wird?
So ging es mir mit ZOMBI CHILD, ein Film mit einer interessanten Perspektive, mit einer interessanten Idee, mit der ich persönlich nur einfach überhaupt nichts anfangen konnte.
Aber zugegeben, das Thema ist wirklich interessant. Wie man schon aus der Schreibweise des Titels ablesen kann, widmet sich ZOMBI CHILD den Ursprüngen des Zombie-Mythos und ist damit himmelweit weg von menschenfressenden Horden an Untoten, die die Erdbevölkerung ausradieren.
Die Untoten in ZOMBI CHILD…
Review by pokeitwithstick ★★★

this is a traditional approach to the zombie theme. i would not call it a horror movie. don`t expect the typical thing you get when there is "zombi" in the name of a movie. this feels more like a ethnological semi - documentary, which touches themes like cultural appropriation and, for sure, racism.
beautiful shot pictures, good actors but neither the story of the zombie, nor the story of the kids feels complete. when i expected the movie to pick up some speed, the credits started rolling.