How Black Zombie Filmmaker Maya Annik Bedward Reclaimed the Monster’s Haitian Origins from Nearly 100 Years of Hollywood Appropriation
With her essential new documentary, Bedward explores the infamous horror figure’s erased roots in a demonised Haitian spiritual practice
by Lana Thorn 10 September 2026
Kino Lorber
Between The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, the modern zombie has an unrelenting, rotting grip on both general audiences and horror heads alike. Not to mention foreign gore fests (Train to Busan) and subversive comedies (Shaun of the Dead), all of which are indebted to Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero, often referred to as the “father of the zombie film”.
While the influence of Romero’s 1968 indie horror on the zombie film canon cannot be understated, Black Zombie explores an origin that goes much further back, an origin that has been systemically obfuscated. In her documentary feature debut, which premiered at this year’s SXSW, Maya Annik Bedward finds the figure’s buried roots in colonial Haiti, in which the zombie — a symbol of stolen agency — functioned as a metaphor for slavery. But after an American travel writer named William Seabrook published his 1929 novel The Magic Island, which marked the first use of the word “zombie” in the printed English language, the sensationalist account of his trip to Haiti set off a chain of events that would forever change the world’s perception of the local culture.
After Seabrook’s book was adapted into the first zombie film, the Bela Lugosi-starring White Zombie (1932), the zombie was introduced to general audiences as the result of “voodoo”, inextricably linking the monster with a gross misinterpretation of the Vodou religion as black magic. With that interpretation of a marginalised culture continuing to inform prejudice today, Bedward traces the zombie’s journey from Haiti to the popular zombie film and television of today.
Calling Phantasmag over Zoom, the Jamaican-French Canadian documentarian discusses her lengthy research process of watching “every zombie film”, getting famed Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash on board as a producer and talking head, and why Jordan Peele’s Get Out is actually a zombie movie.
Bela Lugosi in White Zombie (Victor Halperin, USA, 1932)
Phantasmag: Can you tell me a little bit about how this documentary got set into motion? When did you get the idea and why?
Maya Annik Bedward: The idea came when I first learnt about the connection between the zombie and Haitian Vodou. I was completely shocked that I didn't know that connection, especially because I've always been interested in learning more about a lot of African traditional religions across the diaspora, whether it's Vodou, Candomblé, or Santería, because I think they are really important to understand, and they preserve so much knowledge and history of the diaspora that predates colonialism. It’s always been a personal passion of mine to learn more about my ancestry and where I come from.
So I was always interested in that and in learning about these cultures, religions, and spiritual systems. Then, to find out the zombie is connected to Vodou, I was shocked. And the more I learned, the more I just thought, Wow, I can't believe I don't know this. I can't believe most people don't know this. There’s a lot of information here to reframe our understanding of Vodou and how the early zombie films in Hollywood have shaped the idea of Vodou as black magic to this day. I thought the greater repercussions of the story were so important to explore.
P: Do you have any early memories of when you first saw zombies or Vodou represented in popular culture, and what impressions did those representations leave on you?
MAB: I probably saw Vodou in some Bugs Bunny animation, or some cartoon where they're just like, ‘Watch out for the voodoo witch doctor.’ That stuff was everywhere. I'm sure I saw it as early as two years old, because it's just infiltrated everything. In terms of zombies, I think the first zombie film I saw was 28 Days Later. And I very much came of age when The Walking Dead became a huge thing, and zombies were such a popular phenomenon. Which, again, is why when I found out about the connection to voodoo, I was like, ‘What?’ How is everyone so zombie-obsessed, and we don't know where it comes from? [Laughs]
P: Have you seen the new 28 Years Later movie?
MAB: I have. I went to the drive-in to watch it with my partner.
P: I ask because it tackles British colonialism. That was a movie I thought of when watching your film.
MAB: Totally. I mean, so many zombie films, especially today, have political layers. Even when people say, ‘Zombies have been used as a stand-in for capitalism,’ capitalism is still about labour. There are a lot of themes that tie back to the original zombie even though we aren't aware of its origins. You can still see these conversations around power and labour and exploitation play out.
Director Maya Annik Bedward. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
P: In the film, you address centuries' worth of history and representation of Haitian culture in just 90 minutes. How did you approach the enormity of this task, both on a practical level, but also in the sense that you're setting the record straight on some deeply ingrained prejudices?
MAB: It was a huge challenge, and a lot of people warned me, ‘Maya, you're trying to do a lot in one feature film.’ And I totally was. I just had to be discerning in the edit of what was serving the story and what was important to help an audience, especially one that doesn't really know much of this history, follow along. Figuring that out was a big challenge in the edit because it is so much information, and if you're not aware of French colonialism in Haiti, how do we go from that to talking about the zombie, Night of the Living Dead, and the Haitian Revolution? How do we make that all work in a way that’s easy to understand? It was a lot of working and reworking the edit.
P: Given the breadth of materials you explored, what was something that really surprised you while doing research for the film specifically?
MAB: Watching every single zombie film ever made, I gained a totally new appreciation for horror, especially how it can talk about stories concerning the politics of race. Get Out came out while I was making this film, and that blew me away and opened my eyes to how horror, specifically as a genre, can so succinctly tackle some really complex issues of race and the emotions around oppression and exploitation, and move people to think about the world differently.
P: You mentioned watching every single zombie movie. How was that process, and do you have a favourite?
MAB: It was sometimes taxing, and sometimes really entertaining. There's a lot of humour in a lot of these films. When I was making this film, I met my partner, who's a horror guy, so he had his list of favourite zombie films that he made me watch. I'd say my favourite is Atlantiques. I think that Mati Diop's film is a really beautiful, poetic zombie film. I'm actually curating a program of films that speak to Black Zombie at the Quad Cinema [in New York City], and that's one of the films that's included in that program. I'm excited to see it again, because I've never seen that film in a theatre before.
A still from King of the Zombies (Jean Yarbrough, USA, 1941)
P: You touch a little bit on this in the documentary, but where do you think the zombie as a sociopolitical symbol is at right now, and where do you think it's going?
MAB: I think right now it's a little bit muddled. The Last of Us and the mushroom zombie — it still lives in a lot of these post-apocalyptic narratives. I think it's really stuck at: What happens when the world almost ends, and there are zombies? What does our humanity look like? I think that’s a space into which a lot of these zombie films fall right now.
Get Out is, as you know, not called a zombie film. But in its truest spirit, it’s really tackling a lot of the issues that the Haitian zombie explores. I think that, for me, is in spirit the most ‘zombie film’ that we've seen in recent years. And I would love to see more films like Get Out be made that use it to explore the current situation we're in, especially right now with the erasure of narratives and the oppression of migrants and Black people. I would like us to make more films in that genre that really explore these topics. To do that, we have to give more Black filmmakers money to make films. I think that’s what we should be doing: supporting a lot more Black filmmakers in horror to make these films, because that’s just naturally what I think they’ll make, as we saw with Sinners last year.
P: Would you ever consider making a horror film after this?
MAB: Yes, actually. I fell in love with horror. I have a ghost story that I'm currently working on right now that is inspired by my great-great-great-grandmother. It's in the works.
P: Night of the Living Dead plays a major role in the documentary as perhaps the most influential zombie film for Western popular culture, but it also has a Black lead in Duane Jones. The film touches on the complexity of that representation, especially the impact of the ending in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, but I'm wondering: What was your personal relationship to the movie?
MAB: I had seen parts of it before making this film. I hadn't seen it in its entirety. So I got to learn it through talking to the contributors in the film. [Horror novelist and scholar] Tananarive Due’s analysis of the film really stuck with me, and that’s why I put so much of it in the film. With her personal connection as someone whose mother was very involved in civil rights, it really centres how important it is to look at these older films through the lens of Black audiences. Because a lot of times Black audiences are removed from the genre space and aren't considered, but they’ve been a huge part of horror audiences since the beginning. So reframing a lot of these older works and exploring how they're interpreted by audiences of colour — or by women, or other people who are generally given less space in the genre — is really important.
Slash in Black Zombie. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
P: Because you mentioned Sinners, the near-century’s worth of misrepresenting Vodou in cinema had me thinking of Wunmi Mosaku’s character in the film, where her Hoodoo practice is treated as a force for good and an important part of her culture. What do you make of that kind of representation in such an impactful work of Black horror cinema, and do you think that Vodou will similarly be represented more accurately in the future?
MAB: I really hope it will. The biggest thing I want people to take away from Black Zombie is that we really need to stop portraying Vodou as something to be afraid of, as black magic. That really needs to end, and any representation that we see in that vein needs to be called out. Do I think it's gonna happen overnight? But I think the more we give Black filmmakers the ability to make work, the more we'll see different representations. And I thought, in Sinners, it was done really, really well.
P: A big surprise to me when I was watching the film was the inclusion of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash as both a talking head and an executive producer. How did he board the project, and why did you want to speak with him?
MAB: I met him through our distributor in Canada. They work with him on several projects because they produce a lot of horror films, and he’s really into horror. When they mentioned him, I thought he would be amazing because a lot of people don’t realise how much we see symbols of Vodou in everyday pop culture. There’s been this erasure, and Vodou has been such a big part of the origin story of rock and roll, for example, with Baron Samedi as the guardian of the crossroads [in the folk legend]. So I thought he would embody just how much Vodou has seeped into popular culture without us really knowing. On top of that — with his own personal connection with his mom and how she was African-American and was very connected to Vodou — his awareness around traditional African religious practices added another layer. He covered a lot of fronts.
P: Since you finished the movie, are there any films that have come out since that you would have liked to include, but didn't get a chance to?
MAB: Get Out is definitely one of them, not just because it’s a true zombie film, but also because the ending was inspired by Night of the Living Dead. Originally, Jordan Peele had imagined that his character would meet his demise at the end, and then when he showed it to a Black audience, they said, ‘No more. We don't wanna see any more of this. We don't want a remake of Night of the Living Dead where the protagonist, Ben, gets shot. We need a new story, and we need hope. We need a different way of looking at the future.’ And so I thought that film really showed the possibility of the future of where we could go, and I would have loved to sit with Jordan Peele and talk to him about his process, and also get his take on zombie films. I'm sure he has amazing insights.
P: You said you hope the biggest takeaway is that audiences will stop demonising Vodou.
MAB: I really hope that it becomes commonplace to know that the zombie comes from Haitian Vodou, and that actually Haitian Vodou is not something to be scared of. It's not black magic in any way. It’s a powerful religion. I would also like for people to be more interested in Haitian history and learn more about the Haitian Revolution. And I hope that this film inspires people to learn about this really important part of our history that never gets talked about.
Black Zombie is playing in select US theatres from this Friday, September 11th.