Blu-ray Film Review | Criterion

‘Produced by Val Lewton’: I Walked with a Zombie & The Seventh Victim (1943) • Blu-ray [Criterion Collection] — moody voodoo masterpiece and hopeless satanic sleuthing

Val Lewton, a master of horror, created two chilling films that explore the unseen and the unknown, turning our fears into haunting experiences.

With his reliance on mood and milieu, along with a staunch avoidance of cliché, Val Lewton added a new vocabulary to the audio-visual language of horror. Anyone with an interest in the genre’s foundations will place him in the same lineage as Tod Browning, Paul Leni, and James Whale. However, Lewton does not have any directorial credits to his name, instead earning the rare distinction of being known as an auteur-producer. His films are marked by a sense of macabre menace and creeping unease rather than alarming monsters and jump scares. His horror occurs in the psychological and emotional realms. Along with an impressive collection of bonus material, this new Blu-ray release from the…