Review by John Doyle,
Zombies: When the Dead Walk is a new documentary that looks at the history of the living dead. It’s all about the religious-spiritual traditions that came out of the fusion of the West African and Caribbean experiences. It opens with footage of the zombie walk in my ‘hood and then moves quickly to Haiti, the centre of the zombie culture, so to speak.
Many professors, anthropologists and experts on Haiti turn up to give their views and explain things. But this program, made by Donna Zuckerbrot, is not just a talking-heads doc about the zombie phenomenon. The program also looks closely at the most famous Haitian zombie, one Clairvius Narcisse. In 1962, Narcisse was ill and taken to a hospital in rural Haiti. He appeared to decline quickly, was pronounced dead, and was duly buried.
However, in 1980, a member of his family encountered Narcisse in another part of Haiti. He wasn’t exactly hale and hearty, but he certainly had a story to tell. His tale was, you might say, straight out of a lurid zombie movie. He said that when he was pronounced dead, he was alive, and could hear the doctors talking even as they told others he had passed away. He remained alive while being buried, but shortly after his coffin was in the ground, it was dug up and he was taken away by strangers. For years, he claimed, he had worked on a farm, a virtual slave, alongside others who seemed to be half-dead, as he was.
There is footage of Narcisse from the time he returned from the dead and, indeed, he doesn’t look too good. His case attracted the attention of doctors and anthropologists. The first thing they noted was that while Narcisse was initially welcomed back by his family, he was soon shunned and feared and left alone.
We hear a lot about voodoo and the unique social customs of rural Haiti. And we learn about a specific poison, used in Haiti to create a coma-like state in which the victim can function in a very limited way. This proves useful for creating a group of people who are malleable and can work, slave-like, doing farm labouring.
With its information about advances in psychopharmacology, and zombies in popular culture, this is an excellent, informative program, a weird but intriguing story that blends religion, science and wit.
