I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 horror movie directed by Jacques Tourneur. It was the second horror movie from producer Val Lewton for RKO Pictures. The movie stars Frances Dee as Betsy Connell, Christine Gordon as Jessica Holland, and Tom Conway as Paul Holland.
The story is about a nurse named Betsy who is hired to care for Jessica, the wife of plantation manager Paul Holland. Jessica has a mental paralysis as a result of fever. Betsy determines to cure Jessica even if she needs to use voodoo.
Officially, the movie was based on an article written by Inez Wallace for American Weekly Magazine. Lewton asked his writers to use Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre for giving the story a narrative structure.
I Walked with a Zombie was declared to be "a dull, disgusting exaggeration of an unhealthy, abnormal concept of life" by The New York Times in 1943. Critics later called it "intelligent", "exceptional", and "the most elegant" in Lewton's RKO horror series.