I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
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I Walked with a Zombie Movie Review
I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 indie horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Frances Dee. It’s a very elegant, interesting experiment.
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“Everything good dies here.
Even the stars“
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A female nurse comes to the Caribbean island to care for her employer’s sister who’s a mental patient. The family has a dark past, the sister is potentially a zombie and it eventually all escalates with the intervention of the natives with their voodoo practices. It’s most definitely a very intriguing premise for a horror film which eventually ended up being good and never as great as it could have been. But still, I liked it quite a bit.
What I liked most about the film is its atmosphere, elegance and old-fashioned charm. The narration is old-school and very moody, the film is cinematic with a dose of novel-like sophistication which I liked and of course the mysterious side to it is one of the highlights.
I respected the film for dealing with zombies very realistically. So basically the flick never really gives us a concrete answer of whether or not Jessica is a zombie. It blurs a fine line between a zombie and a mental patient while also dealing very mysteriously with voodoo African practices and religion. It’s an extremely ambiguous movie and that is its biggest strength for sure.
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However, while obviously very sophisticated thematically speaking, mysterious and elegant, the film certainly failed to make an impression when it comes to the genre chills which it thoroughly lacks. Yes, it has some highly memorable imagery, but none of it is particularly creepy or chilly. The atmosphere is effective, but I wanted at least some mildly scary scenes and in that sense the film most definitely is overly traditional.
Frances Dee is very good as Betsy and I really liked her sweet, caring personality. The film is derided for its acting and I simply could not see that. The performances aren’t great, but they most certainly aren’t bad either and are pretty serviceable, especially for a B-picture and a horror flick. Paul is a very interesting, mysterious character, Wesley is quite realistic and well developed and Mrs. Rand appeared too late in the game, but was still very intriguing and important plotwise.
So I Walked with a Zombie is a B-film and thus it needs to be respected even more when it comes to its technical aspects. Again, the horror elements needed to have been much more effective and the second half never quite is good as the promising first half, but there is no denying that the score is powerful and that song while they’re in the restaurant is chilling and the most memorable, authentic scene in the film. It’s a phenomenal concept well put to use.
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The films surely is packed with a lot of great detail and it knows how to accentuate what is important for the story and the overall mystery. It may be too detailed in the way that it forgets to genuinely make you excited or creped out. But the direction from Tourneur is very strong and the cinematography is simply superb. There is a lot of memorable imagery to be had here, the camera movements are excellent and some shots are particularly mesmerizing. So it isn’t one of the best of the 40s horror films, but it’s still a pretty respectable movie in its own right.
I Walked with a Zombie is never particularly creepy in a traditional sense and the second half is weaker than the first one, but it does have a very strong atmosphere, fantastic cinematography and a terrific score. It’s a polished, elegant 40s horror flick with a great attention to detail, an intriguing mystery to it, a lot of memorable imagery and an admirably realistic and ambiguous storytelling approach.
