One Paragraph Movie Review: I Walked With A Zombie

Two hundred and forty-seventh film: I Walked With A Zombie, a 1943 gentle horror movie that is way more sophisticated than its title suggests. It’s short, racist and sexist enough to be incapable of existing comfortably outside its own decade, and presents a deeply unconvincing version of a tropical climate in the Caribbean, but I kind of dug it. A nurse works on a sugar plantation to tend to the catatonic wife of the owner, with whom she promptly falls in love despite the restrictions of propriety, shoulder pads, and cinch waisted-dresses. She bravely approaches the local voodoo practitioners to see if they can help cure her patient, and the whole film leaves us not quite sure if voodoo is effective or if zombies are real. It’s so creepy and well-shot that you almost don’t cringe-flinch when the white woman who has tricked the locals into taking medicine by telling them it chases away evil spirits describes them as primitive and summarises voodoo as “they sing, dance, and carry on”. Hmmm. Two and three quarter unblinking stares out of five.