31 (or so ) Day of Terror: The Serpent and The Rainbow

I hate zombies. I don't mean I'm afraid of zombies, I'm not. I hate zombies. They are the most played out, overexposed, and non-menacing creatures since vampires. I hate all the dumb cliches zombie movies have propagated. I hate how they all just rip off George Romero & Resident Evil. I hate how popular zombie shit has become. And I really fucking hate all the idiotic zombie apocalypse theorizing that's resulted from this stupid craze as though it could ever fucking happen. I. Hate. Zombies.

Which is exactly what drew me to The Serpent and The Rainbow. I was attracted to the notion of a zombie movie that ignored all the super-virus and ravenous horde bullshit and tried to bring them back to their Haitian Voodoo roots. Maybe because that kind of story with that kind of zombie hadn't been used in so long, it would feel fresh and new again. And Wes Craven's 1988 film succeeds on that front, revealing itself as a flawed but fascinating work of religious horror.

The story follows Bill Pullman as Dennis Alan, an anthropologist sent to Haiti by a large pharmaceutical company. He's been sent to investigate reports of a zombie powder, a drug that supposedly can kill a person and then revive them from the dead, and see if he can't bring a sample back to the States. But almost as soon as he lands in Haiti, his search involves him in local Voodoo rituals and the power struggles between powerful Voodoo priests. Not helping matters are the visions he's been suffering lately, horrible nightmares of being buried alive and revived as a zombie slave. Will Alan be able to escape before his search costs him his life? Or worse, his soul?

Bill Pullman after a hit of zombie powder.

To me, The Serpent and the Rainbow is marked by competence. It's a very competently made if not spectacular film. None of its elements are especially badly done, the acting and cinematography serve the material efficiently and the filmmakers don't make any drastic mistakes that would drag the film. But that's something of a backhanded compliment, saying that the film could have been worse. Not that it is bad, it's just that the production feels too safe. It always takes the most obvious options for shot framing, editing, and performances. If the filmmakers had taken a few more chances or pushed their production's strengths a bit farther it could have pushed the film from competent to excellent, at least for this critic. Still, it's an engaging and well-made picture despite this pedestrianism.

It's in the production design that Serpent really shines. It was shot on location in Haiti (and the nearby Dominican Republic when political rioting grew too dangerous) and that adds an authenticity to the presentation of Voodoo throughout the film. All the sets are filled with little details that transport the audience to Haiti. Things like bones dangling from strings, jars filled with weird powders, traditional symbols painted on the walls, and the visage of former Haitian dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier dominate the production and create the sense of place. The music helps in this regard as well, sounding to this admittedly uninformed listener's ear like native Haitian music. This feeling of authenticity is important to the overall production because the narrative claims to be telling a true story about an American experience with Voodoo so making it feel authentic adds legitimacy to that claim. It also separates Serpent from other Voodoo and zombie films, making them seem more stereotypical and Hollywood. This depiction of Haiti & Voodoo is somewhat problematic, which I'll discuss further in a second, but does help distinguish Serpent as a film from usual horror fare.

A zombie from one of Alan's visions.

And The Serpent and the Rainbow has one thing going for it that no other film I've reviewed this month has. It actually scared me. I mentioned before that Bill Pullman's character suffers from visions throughout the film and these are the strongest moments of the film. They are clearly where Craven feels the most comfortable and so it's where he pulls out all the horror tricks, employing striking imagery of  snakes, corpses, and coffins to terrifying effect. Functionally they're similar to the killer dream sequences from Craven's earlier Nightmare on Elm Street, but serve a different purpose. Like in Nightmare, exactly when reality ends and the visions begin is kept unclear so that the reveal of that divide can be used as a punchline of fear and, also similarly, they have a more surreal antagonistic atmosphere. As though the very setting has turned against the protagonist. But unlike in Nightmare where the dream moments served a narrative purpose, in Serpent they serve a thematic one. I've talked before about how rationality vs superstition is a common theme in horror and we can see it again in this film. Pullman's Dr. Alan is a rationalist, He's an American doctor after all, who enters into the superstitious world of Haiti and Voodoo. Almost from the outset he finds himself under attack from that superstition, from things he can't make sense of with his rational scientific viewpoint. The visions he suffers from are a sign of mind deteriorating from that very difficulty, because he cannot change his worldview to accept this this seemingly mystic Voodoo it has left himself vulnerable to that same Voodoo. It only when Alan embraces Voodoo's unexplainable nature that he can fight back.

Zakes Morae as the villainous Peytraud.

But that brings me to Serpent's depiction of Haiti & Voodoo and that's where I'm conflicted. I'm unsure if it's a positive depiction or a negative one. On the one hand, it avoids the "white savior" angle that many other stories that have white protagonists traveling to a foreign, non-white country tend to fall into. Indeed, as I just illustrated the very fact the protagonist is a white foreigner leaves him at a disadvantage. And on that same note, the film doesn't paint all the Haitians with the same brush. The narrative has good Haitians, innocent Haitians, conman Haitians, suffering Haitians, and evil Haitians. The lead villain is both an evil Voodoo sorcerer and an agent of the Haitian dictatorship. Voodoo is shown the same complexity, used for both good and evil purposes. But on the other hand, Voodoo is shown as literal magic with souls and spells being real. There's a tinge of exoticism in that, with Voodoo magic only available for use by poor, heavily-accented blacks, and it's slightly insulting to what is an actual religion. But movies treat other religions like Catholicism and Buddhism in similar terms quite often, so should I really make much of it? I'm not sure and it's up to people more knowledgeable about both Haiti and Voodoo to make a call, but it would feel disingenuous of me not to mention it. It also brings me to another minor fault of Serpent. Some of the plot, like understanding the villain's motivation, requires an understanding of Haiti under the Duvalier regime at the time the story is set. The film provides very little context of that for the audience which wasn't a problem in 1988 when that information was still recent, but hurts the film now for audiences coming in cold. A minor flaw, but still.

Despite that, I recommend The Serpent and the Rainbow. The on-location shooting is beautiful, bringing locations many audiences probably wouldn't see otherwise to life. The central mystery is engaging & moody, if paced overly fast. And the use of Voodoo in the film is interesting and unique, unlike how the religion is shown in any other film even if it is somewhat problematic. If you're looking for a different kind of horror movie, something with a non-American flavor but with the requisite chills, check it out. I can't guarantee you'll like it, but I can guarantee you haven't seen anything like it.

Final Score: 3/5