I Walked with a Zombie
October 17, 2026
5:30pm | SIFF Film Center
Presented by Grand Illusion Cinema. Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur elevated the horror film to new heights of poetic abstraction with this entrancing journey into the realm between life and death.
When she takes a job caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island, a young nurse (Frances Dee) finds herself plunged into a mysterious world where the ghosts of slavery haunt the present and Vodou priests have the power to summon the living dead.
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SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
Sugarcane swaying in a moonlit field, the hypnotic beat of ceremonial drums, the relentless pull toward death—the otherworldly atmosphere of this bold reimagining of Jane Eyre is as close as studio-era Hollywood ever came to pure dream-state surrealism.
“It transcends the conventions of the horror genre and remains one of Lewton-Tourneur’s most compelling studies in light and darkness.” —Don Druker, Chicago Reader
“It is Tourneur’s caressingly evocative direction, superbly backed by Roy Hunt’s chiaroscuro images, that makes sheer magic of the film’s brooding journey into fear.” —Tom Milne, Time Out
- Director: Jacques Tourneur
- Principal Cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell
- Country: USA
- Year: 1943
- Running Time: 69 min.
- Language: English