TL;DR
Hollywood has twisted Haitian Vodou into dark magic and the zombie into a racist symbol, erasing the true history of slavery and colonialism behind it.
In Western horror films, zombies are brain-eating monsters and Haitian Vodou is necromantic black magic. After watching 500 zombie movies, director Maya Bedward decided to strip that skin off and tell the story colonialists buried.
The zombie isn't a ghost, it's a slave's nightmare
The real zombie comes from a Vodou belief: when you die, you return to a 'mythical Africa' to rejoin your ancestors and finally be free. A sorcerer can turn you into a zombie and trap your spirit, so you can't escape even in death.
For enslaved people worked to death in sugarcane fields, freedom after death was the only hope — the zombie meant even that could be taken away.
White directors turned a religion into a cult
Digging up 1920s black-and-white footage of sugarcane workers, Bedward found early Hollywood movies painting Vodou as terrifying rituals and Haitians as evil priests — all to justify colonial rule. They invented the racist 'black zombie'.
The shame from those films made Haitians and the Black diaspora disown their own ancestral religions. The director says she made this film to smash that lens.
Making a documentary nearly got people killed
Even bigger drama: before filming, Haiti's president was assassinated and the country collapsed into chaos. Setting up a camera on the street could get you shot, so the crew fled to the Dominican Republic and shot the final scenes in a ruined sugarcane mill.
Instead of turning that suffering into a rant, Bedward ended the film with an untranslated improvised ritual dance — she refuses to let audiences consume it, just sit with her in that moment.
Next time you see a 'dark magic' movie, ask yourself: who exactly is pulling the strings?
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