In the Bedroom

Bertrand Bonello on Coma

ADAM NAYMAN

Officially, Bertrand Bonello’s last three features comprise a triptych about youth, but there’s also a shadow interpretation waiting to be made of Nocturama (2016), Zombi Child (2019), and Coma as an extended, eccentric treatise on horror-movie history and aesthetics—call it a self-reflexive Trilogy of Terror. Whatever its debts to Le diable probablement (1977), Nocturama hewed closer to Romero than Bresson, restaging the late-capitalist tragedy of Dawn of the Dead (1978) in a Parisian department store minus any visible zombies, but with the creeping sense of persecution and dread intact. Less successfully, but with true daring, the partially Haitian-set Zombi Child walked with Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur down the path of mordant, morbid post-colonial allegory, waving at Candyman (1992) and The Craft (1995) along the way. And now, made deep…

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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 93 - Winter 2023

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