Bonello’s mixing of genres, coming-of-age, romance, supernatural and horror, makes it difficult for the viewer to truly be sucked into Bonello’s phantasmagoric world. The director’s last film, the excellent “Nocturama,” worked at a higher level because it delved into a fully lived-in but simple and accessible setting, a shopping mall. Bonello’s message in “Zombi Child” seems to be about cultural appropriation, one mixed in with Mélissa’s white, lovesick classmate (Louise Labeque). The first-world views that arise from the white-collar students in the film seem like a distant, but honest reflection of the current French zeitgeist, one in which the Haitian population is ever-so-growing but lacks the desire of conforming to the French white way of thinking. The dramatic and cultural conflicts, however, are only teased upon by Bonello here. We get it, there are unconscious biases with us white folks but it ends with a climax that’s more exposition than satisfying resolution. The entire film feels coalesced in a way that feels both messy and uninvolving. It feel like a rather strange brew of things, but it never resorts to finding its own identity within that convoluted mix. [C-] Contribute Hire me
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