THE STORY – From the flickering screens of Hollywood horror to the haunted cane fields of colonial Haiti, “Black Zombie” unearths the buried origins of the zombie, reclaiming it as a symbol of survival and spiritual resistance.
THE CAST – Yves-Grégory Francois, Anderson Mojica, Erol Josué, Mambo Labelle Déese Botanica, Slash, Tom Savini, Tananarive Due & Zandashé Brown
THE TEAM – Maya Annik Bedward (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes
“Zombification is living under someone’s thumb.”
A quote from one of the interview subjects in Maya Annik Bedward’s “Black Zombie” encapsulates the film’s central thesis with striking clarity, making it one of the most memorable documentaries to premiere at SXSW this year. At once a lesson in Hollywood history and a powerful act of cultural reclamation, the film examines one of horror’s most enduring subgenres while interrogating the ways it has misrepresented and distorted its origins. Bedward traces the rise of zombies in the mainstream, revealing how their evolution further devalued and obscured a religious practice that came to be loosely associated with a creature now embedded in global fear.
“Black Zombie” is, first and foremost, a film about the people of Haiti and the centuries of hardship they have endured, from slavery to the imposition of foreign religion by colonial oppressors. In the aftermath of colonial rule, Voodoo was outlawed under the Haitian constitution, and the United States later weaponized these cultural misunderstandings to justify systems of forced labor. Zombification and slavery were intertwined, as Haitians, imposed by their new masters to work, were a shell of themselves. This pain, depicted as zombies in literature and, eventually, film, was littered with racist imagery and tropes, all but turning the voodoo-adherent concept of the zombie into an internalized fear of blackness. Little nuance was afforded to this culture as voodoo and zombies were all but fear-inducing, correlating blackness with something sinister. “The Magic Island,” a novel by W.B. Seabrook, was the provocative force behind these stereotypes, and its eventual film adaptation was 1932’s “White Zombie.”
Today, when we think of zombies, we picture slow-moving corpses driven by an insatiable hunger for human flesh. The racialized origins of the figure have largely faded as the archetype has evolved into something entirely different. Bedward explores this shift through a compelling examination of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.” It is here that “Black Zombie” becomes especially fascinating, digging into the genre’s lingering stigmas and the political resonance of Romero’s work. Released in 1968, the film moved away from Voodoo mythology and instead tapped into the anxieties of a nation in the throes of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, with Duane Jones at its center, the film carries an emotional weight that speaks to the persistence of those earlier stigmas, even as it redefines the genre.
Bedward charts these evolving eras of the zombie subgenre through a blend of traditional documentary interviews, archival footage, and evocative recreations of colonial Haiti. There are also portions filmed recreating colonial Haiti, depicting the natives working in the sugar fields under colonial rule. Duraid Munajim and Ricardo Diaz’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography helps evoke the sentiment surrounding this period. The film features a wide range of voices, including collaborators of Romero, film historians, Black filmmakers reflecting on a genre that has often marginalized them, and practitioners of Voodoo. Ultimately, “Black Zombie” returns to Haiti, the origin point of it all, bringing the conversation full circle.
What emerges is a vital corrective to decades of misunderstanding. Voodoo is not the sinister, fearmongering force it has so often been portrayed as, but a deeply spiritual and culturally rich practice. Bedward highlights the beauty and resilience of the Haitian people while examining how their identity was distorted and stripped of dignity through storytelling. Stories shape history, and more importantly, they have the power to reclaim what has been lost.
Will zombies ever fade from the cultural consciousness? With works like “The Walking Dead” and “The Last of Us,” it’s all but certain that this form of storytelling will find new ways to resonate with different generations. But at least a film like “Black Zombie” exists to provide a necessary context for those who see it.
