A new writing segment, "Ten Items or Less" is an attempt to consciously cutback and restrict how much I write. I get ten sentences or less to discuss a movie. That's it. Let's see if some genius comes out of working around my self-made obstacle.
Producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror movies thrive on suggestion and what's not shown as much as, if not more so than, what we do, and I Walked With a Zombie is no exception. The film's tension derives from making us sit on the question of whether Paul Holland's (Tom Conway) wife Jessica (Christine Gordon) is or isn't a zombie; well, technically she's zombie either way, but just a sleepwalking vegetable in the less exciting of the possibilities. The film is Jane Eyre thrown into the West Indies and given a heavy dose of voodoo and a moody atmosphere provided by director Jacques Tourneur to match the Victorian Gothic story. So it's no George A. Romero or 28 Days Later, but Tourneur gives the story a strong bite by telling the melodrama about the Holland brothers, their never-ending, bitter sibling rivalry, the lingering damage of the past that won't go away, and how they're doomed to repeat the past. New plantation nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), tasked with caring for Jessica, becomes torn between Paul and Wesley (James Ellison), who also previously pined for Jessica and still stews about it, descending further and further into alcoholism. The film never settles its central tension over whether Jessica is a supernatural undead being, and that's all for the better, leaving it to our imagination and making it far more creepy and strange.
Grade: ★★★
No comments:
Post a Comment