Kino Lorber will open Black Zombie, a new documentary from filmmaker Maya Annik Bedward, in New York and Los Angeles on September 11, with a national expansion to follow. The 90-minute film traces the zombie from its origins as a symbol of colonial enslavement in Haiti to its transformation into one of Hollywood’s most commercially dominant monsters.

Before it was a flesh-eating ghoul, the zombie was a figure of real terror — not the dead returned to life, but a living person robbed of will and agency by dark spiritual forces. Black Zombie excavates that history and follows it forward, examining landmark films including White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, and The Serpent and the Rainbow alongside archival footage and vérité scenes. Bedward’s film argues that Hollywood didn’t just borrow the zombie — it stripped it of its roots, flipped it inside out, and made the original victim into the threat.

Bedward draws on interviews with an extraordinary range of voices: cultural historians and Haitian spiritual practitioners including Yves-Grégory Francois, Mambo Labelle Déesse, and Zandashé Brown, alongside genre legends Tom Savini and horror scholar Tananarive Due. Music icon Slash, who serves as an executive producer on the film, also appears.

“An act of reclamation. It’s the rare documentary you want everyone you know to watch,” wrote Jessi Cape at The Austin Chronicle. Caroline Colvin at Dread Central called it “a smart, nuanced love letter to Haiti.” Variety‘s Dennis Harvey described it as “a fascinating, visually inventive journey through the history of Haiti’s Voudou religion and its appropriation by Western interlopers.”

Black Zombie made its world premiere at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival and has since screened at Hot Docs, Blackstar Film Festival, and Fantasia International Film Festival.