The film deals with the story of Dennis Alan, a researcher at Harvard University. Dennis moved to Haiti to investigate the zombie legend and any possible links about the practice of black magic and the existence of a drug used by black magic practitioners to convert people into zombies. Dennis is always trying to find the miracle medicine, as the satirical world mysteriously enters into the underworld.
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.
An admirable effort to put the voodoo back in zombie mythology ... anyone interested in a different take on a zombie tale should certainly give it a look-over.
The Serpent and the Rainbow has a screenplay that often breaks its spell.
Washington Post
January 01, 2000
Take 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.
Better (certainly classier) than most films directed by the late Wes Craven, this zombie flick still registers as an also-ran in the horror sweepstakes.
