In 1988's "The Serpent and the Rainbow" Bill Pullman plays an anthropologist who goes to Haiti to investigate a rumored drug that can make people seem dead, but they're really not. In other words, the plot addresses the reality behind the zombie myth. The story's supposedly based (loosely) on factual material contained in Wade Davis' book.
Davis reportedly wanted noted director Peter Weir to direct the film, but he got stuck with horror maestro Wes Craven. Wes is great for cartoony horror flicks, like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" series, but he was apparently out of his league here. I hate giving bad reviews to movies because I realize no one intends to make a bad film. Making decent movies is expensive and takes a lot of work by scores of talented people. "The Serpent and the Rainbow" had the funds, talent, locations and music to make a quality film, but it horribly fails.
Over the years it's taken me four attempts just to get past the 20-40 minute mark. I finally forced myself to watch the entire film last night and it was a chore. It starts out intriguing, but immediately fails to engross. The story's fine, but the way it's told is bad, which includes the puzzling editing. It's incoherent and you soon find yourself bored watching interesting images and cool percussion-oriented music, but characters and a tale you don't care about, mainly because you were never allowed to comprehend it.
There's a shallow love story with the requisite beautiful native (Cathy Tyson) and the second act gets a little better with Brent Jennings as Mozart, but the third act spirals into to ultra-horror cheese. Some scenes are so ridiculously bad they're laugh-out-loud funny. For instance, a classy white woman suddenly jumps on the dinner table radically attacking the anthropologist; a torture-chair moves across the room by itself on a couple occasions; someone's head falls off; a scorpion walks out of someone's mouth; something alien and diabolic comes out of someone else's mouth (or head); etc. On top of this, there are so many dream/hallucination sequences that they become tedious. These scenes were obviously included to up the ante with horror props and – hopefully – jolt the audience, but they utterly fail because, after a while, you suspect that what's going on isn't really happening and it's hard to be scared by illusions. Most of the time, they just make you laugh, like the (supposedly) creepy hand coming out of the soup (rolling my eyes). Don't get me wrong, scenes like these CAN work in horror films, but they have to be done right and in the right context, which isn't the case here, unfortunately.
The only reason I'm not giving it an "F" is because of the positives noted above.
The film runs 98 minutes and was shot in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Boston.
GRADE: D
Davis reportedly wanted noted director Peter Weir to direct the film, but he got stuck with horror maestro Wes Craven. Wes is great for cartoony horror flicks, like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the "Scream" series, but he was apparently out of his league here. I hate giving bad reviews to movies because I realize no one intends to make a bad film. Making decent movies is expensive and takes a lot of work by scores of talented people. "The Serpent and the Rainbow" had the funds, talent, locations and music to make a quality film, but it horribly fails.
Over the years it's taken me four attempts just to get past the 20-40 minute mark. I finally forced myself to watch the entire film last night and it was a chore. It starts out intriguing, but immediately fails to engross. The story's fine, but the way it's told is bad, which includes the puzzling editing. It's incoherent and you soon find yourself bored watching interesting images and cool percussion-oriented music, but characters and a tale you don't care about, mainly because you were never allowed to comprehend it.
There's a shallow love story with the requisite beautiful native (Cathy Tyson) and the second act gets a little better with Brent Jennings as Mozart, but the third act spirals into to ultra-horror cheese. Some scenes are so ridiculously bad they're laugh-out-loud funny. For instance, a classy white woman suddenly jumps on the dinner table radically attacking the anthropologist; a torture-chair moves across the room by itself on a couple occasions; someone's head falls off; a scorpion walks out of someone's mouth; something alien and diabolic comes out of someone else's mouth (or head); etc. On top of this, there are so many dream/hallucination sequences that they become tedious. These scenes were obviously included to up the ante with horror props and – hopefully – jolt the audience, but they utterly fail because, after a while, you suspect that what's going on isn't really happening and it's hard to be scared by illusions. Most of the time, they just make you laugh, like the (supposedly) creepy hand coming out of the soup (rolling my eyes). Don't get me wrong, scenes like these CAN work in horror films, but they have to be done right and in the right context, which isn't the case here, unfortunately.
The only reason I'm not giving it an "F" is because of the positives noted above.
The film runs 98 minutes and was shot in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Boston.
GRADE: D