64
Metascore
13 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumChicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumGenuinely 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).
- 80Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonApart 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.
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe Serpent and the Rainbow is uncanny in the way it takes the most lurid images and makes them plausible.
- 75Chicago TribuneDave KehrChicago TribuneDave KehrMingling 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.
- 60TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA 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.
- 50The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinMr. 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.
- 40Time Out LondonNigel FloydTime Out LondonNigel FloydUnfortunately, the political parallel between the ideological repression of Baby Doc's regime and the stultifying effects of the zombifying fluid is only sketchily developed, leaving us with a series of striking but isolated set pieces.
- 40Washington PostWashington PostTake a powerful, revealing nonfiction book, sift through it for its most cliche'd elements and turn it into a terror film and you've got The Serpent and the Rainbow.