Rotten
Offers a few good scares but gets bogged down in special effects.
Variety Staff, Variety
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Don't Bury Me...I'm Not Dead!
1988 · 1h 38m · R
Horror, Thriller
Directed by
Wes Craven
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The Serpent and the Rainbow
Overview
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.
Director and cast
- Wes Craven Director
- Bill Pullman as Dennis Alan
- Cathy Tyson as Marielle Duchamp
- Zakes Mokae as Dargent Peytraud
- Paul Winfield as Lucien Celine
- Brent Jennings as Louis Mozart
- Conrad Roberts as Christophe
- Badja Djola as Gaston
- Theresa Merritt as Simone
- Michael Gough as Schoonbacher
- Paul Guilfoyle as Andrew Cassedy
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
Fresh
Genuinely frightening.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Rotten
Unfortunately, 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.
Derek Adams, Time Out
Rotten
The Serpent and the Rainbow has a screenplay that often breaks its spell.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
Fresh
The Serpent and the Rainbow is uncanny in the way it takes the most lurid images and makes them plausible.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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