Synopsis
A Harvard anthropologist is sent to Haiti to retrieve a strange powder that is said to have the power to bring human beings back from the dead. In his quest to find the miracle drug, the cynical scientist enters the rarely seen netherworld of walking zombies, blood rites and ancient curses. Based on the true life experiences of Wade Davis and filmed on location in Haiti, it's a frightening excursion into black magic and the supernatural.
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Cast
- Bill PullmanDennis Alan
- Cathy TysonMarielle Duchamp
- Zakes MokaeDargent Peytraud
- Paul WinfieldLucien Celine
- Brent JenningsLouis Mozart
- Conrad RobertsChristophe
- Badja DjolaGaston
- Theresa MerrittSimone
- Michael GoughSchoonbacher
- Paul GuilfoyleAndrew Cassedy
Recommendations
- 90
Chicago Reader
Genuinely frightening...it's nice for a change to see some of the virtues of old-fashioned horror films—moody dream sequences, unsettling poetic images, and passages that suggest more than they show—rather than the usual splatter shocks and special effects (far from absent, but employed with relative economy). - 80
Washington Post
Apart from moments of conventional schlock (the ending included), "Serpent" twists with expertly drawn menace. The editing's snappy, the images visceral, and Craven's Haiti is a craze of blood ceremonies and political rioting -- it's set during the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
The Serpent and the Rainbow is uncanny in the way it takes the most lurid images and makes them plausible. - 75
Chicago Tribune
Mingling a frank trashiness with unexpected ambition, Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow emerges as one of the more commanding horror movies of recent months. - 60
Empire
Entertaining and ambitious horror hokum, slightly tarnished by a disappointingly obvious "shock" ending. - 60
Variety
A better-than-average supernatural tale [inspired by Wade Davis’ book] that offers a few good scares but gets bogged down in special effects. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
A sloppy but ambitious mix of pop anthropology, political observation, and good old-fashioned Val Lewtonesque horror, The Serpent and the Rainbow succeeds more often than it fails. - 50
The New York Times
Mr. Craven's attempts at such effects are always gripping, but here they are sometimes overpowered by the complexity of the material. The search for the zombifying elixir, the influence of the Tontons Macoute, the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship and the mysterious powers of voodoo sometimes run together in a manner less provocative than confusing.
