Review by Melissa Hank, Editors pick of the week
Some say that television is mindless entertainment that sucks the lifeblood out of you. While that may be debatable in the larger realm of society, the imagery is eerily apt when it comes to VisionTV’s latest installment of its Enigma anthology series, Zombies: When the Dead Walk.
The hour-long documentary from filmmaker Donna Zuckerbrot probes the truth behind zombies, those half-alive, half-dead creatures who have a hankering for human brains. Thanks to pop culture – ahem, director George A. Romero – we’re well familiar with the mythology. His films Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead pretty much covered all aspects of the reanimated human corpses. Zombies: When the Dead Walk, however, travels to Haiti, where voodoo and zombies are part of the cultural and religious identity of the island.
Word has it that secret societies punish and enslave criminals with zombification. Backing the validity of that claim is the case of Clairvius Narcisse, who was pronounced dead in 1962 but was found among the living 18 years later. Zuckerbrot also interviews author and anthropologist Wade Davis, who recorded his search through Haiti for the folk poison rumoured to create zombies in the 1985 bestseller The Serpent and the Rainbow.
So walk – don’t run – to the tube for this investigation of the cultural and historical significance of zombies.
Halloween comes early this year.
