The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
Storyline
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.
Directors
Cast
Brent Jennings, Francis Guinan, Badja Djola, Bill Pullman, Paul Winfield, Zakes Mokae, Michael Gough, Paul Guilfoyle, Conrad Roberts, Aleta Mitchell, Cathy Tyson, Theresa Merritt, Dey Young, William Newman, Jaime Pina Gautier, Evencio Mosquera Slaco, Kimberleigh Aarn, Philogen Thomas, Ana Rosa Smith Avila
Trailer
Reviews
90
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
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
The Serpent and the Rainbow is uncanny in the way it takes the most lurid images and makes them plausible.
75
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.
