Review of The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) by Zoran S — 05 Dec 2008

See this if you want a Voodoo horror drama about an American who goes to Haiti in search of uncovering the truth and feasibility of zombification.

This film has an interesting, and in horror, not always effective, structure where the first two thirds are spent on genuine plot and character development, with only hints at the lurking malice to come in all its gory. Craven pulls off this tough format with utter grace and natural pacing. The horror stuff kicks in at an hour into this 90 minute feature, and it's a regular Craven wallop of effective and inventive horrific distortions of reality. So it's a divided film (but the parts compliment and tie together). The first segment is legitimate drama and if done through to feature length by a non-horror director, would be praised as such. That's what makes the horror part work - that Craven's whole film balances and feels real in its plot and characters. So much horror films cannot achieve this.

Bill Pullman does a really stellar job as the scientific Westerner scouting for the next pharmaceutical breakthrough in a dangerous politically upset poorer nation. His character falls into the Haitian world so well, that the second half, wherein Voodoo takes center stage, the magical and spiritual elements his character once doubted now seem wholly real, and for him, beyond lethally dangerous. We can believe that souls are really at stake; this is what any good drama with Voudon or or Christianity or paganism or any faith-based practices aims toward.

The production design is stellar. The Voudon temple setup reminds me of old Hammer Voodoo films.

Reflecting on many of the earlier non-supernatural action sequences in the movie, I really like Craven's action style in the 80s, and think he doesn't always get acknowledged for his extreme flair for orchestrating action because his primary peer their is John Carpenter. (They are each complete masters of the action horror, but Carpenter is utterly and incomparably genius with his action directing, and Craven is utterly and incomparably genius in his talent for horror.).

The three primary zombie (or zombified) examples here are just plain great. The makeup is subtle and the sell is in the acting and scene framing and lighting. The harsher and gorier bits (which are non-zombie but still atypical and advanced in concept) are very 80s; they're NOT BAD but they have that distinctly 80s makeup aesthetic going on and the big tell is in a poorly done decapitated head.

Like how the finale reconnects the spiritual and physical worlds - while a small group combats for their souls, a nation-forming revolution ensues in the streets above.