Val Lewton

If you’re hoping for a horror movie, Zombie will disappoint. Even seemingly climactic scenes mystify rather than thrill: they pay off only in mood and a slow accumulation of character detail. Eventually, even the basic narrative seem to dissipate. Forced to fill in narrative gaps by intuition, we must assemble scraps of dialogue and details of behaviour into our best guess about what’s going on – a narrative strategy that forces us to “lean in” to the story, heightening our attention and tuning us to nuance, atmosphere, suggestion. However much we succeed in making sense of the story on repeat viewings, we’re left with unsettling questions, unsure we’ll ever have the full story. Kind of like life.

Psychologically complex, genuinely sexy, hauntingly sad – and when it comes to the creepy stuff, Cat People plays for keeps. Tourneur’s aren’t called “supernatural thrillers” for nothing: the films are both thrilling and theological. The supernatural is rendered spiritual, otherworldliness is grounded in the everyday world, and sin and the human condition are taken seriously.

I was very pleasantly surprised last night while browsing possible DVR candidates that TCM is showing both Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie again today. It wasn’t too long ago that Michael Guillen over at The Evening Class hosted a Val Lewton blogathon with a plethora of links to good commentary on both […]