D: Wes Craven. Richard Maxwell, Adam Rodman. Book: Wade Davis. P: Doug Claybourne, David Ladd. Cast: Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield. UK dist (DVD): Universal.
Fact and fiction prove an uneasy mix in this intriguing, if ultimately underwhelming, Wes Craven voodoo chiller. Set in Haiti during the dying months of the infamous Papa Doc Duvalier regime, it’s nominally based on a non-fiction book by Canadian anthropologist Wade Davis, describing his research into a possible pharmacological basis for witchdoctors’ apparent control over their “zombie” slaves. (Tetrodotoxin poisoning, as any good necromancer kno; a sort of zombificatory Rohypnol.) While the socio-political backdrop provides an atmosphere of compelling realism, lending the production an unusually grown-up feel, its effectiveness is compromised by an over-reliance on very 80s sub-Elm Street dream imagery and a preponderance of voiceover exposition.
A young Bill Pullman (Craven’s fictionalised stand-in for Davis) intones swathes of info-dump narration, which is intended presumably to impart a documentarian feel but succeeds only in disengaging our attention from the drama; meanwhile, the earnest intent is further undermined by genre demands for zombie claws emerging from bowls of soup. (We interrupt this broadcast for an important public information announcement. Ladies! Please refrain from launching at dinner guests with a butcher knife, as this represents a significant breach of social etiquette. We now return you to your scheduled programming.)
Where Serpent scores big, however, is in the casting of its eminently hissable villain: secret policeman, torturer and voodoo shaman Zakes Mokae, conveying with his unblinking stare and crooked smile a man who has gazed into an abyss of human depravity with dreamy approval. You don’t want this bugger threatening to skewer your spuds to a chair with a nine-inch rusty nail, believe me. Though the lead-in to the final act confrontation feels a bit rushed, with the toppling of the Papa Doc dictatorship used as a somewhat abrupt deus ex machina, there’s a pleasingly visceral energy to the Pullman/Mokae smackdown finale (during which the villain demonstrates an amusing aptitude for entering the frame at stage left or right with a horizontal flying tackle). It’s no classic, but Serpent and the Rainbow deserves some credit for attempting a sober examination of the scientific and political facets of the Haitian zombie menace.