Living Dead Girl (5 Stars)

"The Living Dead Girl" is Jean Rollin's 14th film, made in 1982. It's one of Jean Rollin's strangest and saddest films; a zombie movie that treats gore not as spectacle, but as tragedy. While many zombie films turn the undead into anonymous flesh-eating mobs, Rollin narrows the focus to a single resurrected woman and the emotionally destructive bond that ties her to the living. The result feels less like horror exploitation than a doomed romance infected by death.

The film begins with Catherine Valmont rising from her grave after toxic waste contaminates the crypt where she lies buried. In another director's hands this might become social commentary or apocalyptic terror, but Rollin is interested in something far more intimate. Catherine is not a monster in the traditional sense. She's confused, fragile and trapped somewhere between death and memory. The only thing anchoring her to existence is her childhood friend Hélène, who immediately devotes herself to protecting Catherine, even after discovering that Catherine must kill in order to survive.

This is where the moral ambiguity becomes fascinating. Catherine commits terrible acts, slaughtering innocent people and feeding on them with increasing desperation. Yet Rollin films her almost sympathetically. She doesn't appear to enjoy killing; she looks haunted by it. There are moments where Catherine seems aware that she's become something unnatural and horrifying. Her beauty decays in the course of the film, making her resemble a corpse wearing the fading memory of humanity. She's trapped inside a body that demands violence.

Hélène, however, makes conscious choices. She's alive, rational and fully aware of the consequences of her actions. Rather than helping Catherine die peacefully or alerting authorities, she becomes an enabler. She lures victims to Catherine, lies to protect her and treats murder as the price of preserving their emotional connection. The film quietly asks whether love can become monstrous when it values possession above morality. Hélène's devotion initially seems compassionate, but gradually it turns selfish. She cannot bear to lose Catherine again, even if preserving her means condemning others.

That makes the central question deeply uncomfortable: who is the real monster? Catherine kills because she's become a creature driven by hunger beyond her control. Hélène kills through choice. One acts from curse, the other from obsession. Rollin never gives an easy answer because he clearly sees tragedy in both women. Catherine is horrifying, but she's also suffering. Hélène is loving, but her love corrodes into moral blindness.

The film becomes even more poignant because Rollin presents their relationship with genuine tenderness. There is an unmistakably romantic undercurrent between the two women, yet it's portrayed less as exploitation and more as emotional dependency. Hélène clings to an idealised memory of Catherine from childhood, refusing to accept that the woman she loved is gone. In a sense, she falls in love with death itself. Catherine, meanwhile, increasingly recognises what she's become and seems almost ashamed of Hélène's sacrifices.

Unlike conventional zombie films, there's no triumph in survival, no restoration of order and no clear distinction between innocence and evil. The horror comes from watching affection transform into complicity. Rollin asks whether unconditional love is truly noble when it destroys everyone surrounding it.

Visually, the film carries Rollin's trademark dreamlike atmosphere; crumbling chateaux, graveyards and misty countryside landscapes that feel suspended outside ordinary reality. Yet compared to some of his more surreal works, this film has unusual emotional directness. The gore is graphic, but the lasting impression is melancholy rather than shock. Catherine is less a predator than a decaying memory refusing to disappear.

In the end, "The Living Dead Girl" suggests that monstrosity isn't simply about violence or undeath. The greater horror may lie in refusing to let go; in loving someone so absolutely that morality itself becomes secondary. Catherine is the monster created by death, but Hélène is the monster created by love.