L'emprise des ténèbres

The story of a chemist who is investigating a rumoured drug that brings people back from the dead. This is a great movie which keeps you in suspense right through. Not a horror movie but more of a suspense type movie that enters the world of black magic and voodoo. Very underrated movie and well worth watching, great plot and the story works.

Nice trip to Voodoo wonderland: Wes Craven did a good job with The Serpent and the Rainbow, capturing the exotic magic and world of Haiti. Production, acting, story solid, with that special exotic extra flavor. The only thing I gotta complain, I would have spiced up the level of horror a tiny bit. Well, sometimes we can't have everything, sadly, I should add ;)

One of Wes Craven's best, "Serpent and the Rainbow" is as much a psychological thriller as a horror movie. Some horror fans may find it too slow (it takes its sweet time to come to a climax) but it's worth it... the journey is entertaining and interesting. This is a polished, professionally filmed movie with higher production values than the average for its genre.

I've never seen a film before that went quite so in-depth into the subject of voodoo. Filmed on location in Haiti, this movie goes into a lot of detail about various voodoo practices and introduces the voodoo versions of the good and evil magician, the houngon and the bocor. If you have any interest at all in this subject matter (or the supernatural in general), I recommend the movie on that basis alone.

Acting is uniformly solid throughout, if nothing really outstanding. We do not come to care very deeply about these characters, so their trials, tribulations and deaths do not bother us much... but Craven's attention to detail really shows, and there isn't a moment of this movie that lacks entertainment value. 7/10.

Wes Craven's "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is one of the more original and ambitious horror movies to come out of the '80s. Not only does it seek to reconnect cinematic zombies with their voodoo roots, ala classics like "White Zombie", but it also uses the creation of zombies as a political allegory. The film is set in Haiti during the last days of the dictatorship of "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Based - very loosely one surmises - on a true story, the plot follows Dr. Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) as he investigates a powder that is said to turn people into zombies. He is aided in his quest by Dr. Marielle Duchamp (Cathy Tyson), who he quickly falls for, and Louie Mozart (Brent Jennings) an expert in voodoo. Dargent Peytraud (the chilling Zakes Mokae) is the snarling villain of the piece, a man with sinister powers both government-sanctioned and supernatural.

The film abounds with creatively gruesome imagery - a man is buried alive, screaming, in a coffin as it fills with blood, a fiendish hand reaches out from a bowl of soup - this is one of those rare films that genuinely makes your skin crawl. Horror fans should not miss it. It's a shame that the film runs just a little longer than it should and becomes disappointingly routine in its final moments.

There is a sense that this movie was aiming a bit higher than it ending up reaching. I can't quite hold that against it.

Bill Pullman is an anthropologist who on a previous visit to Haiti experienced the power of black voodoo,filling his mind with evil dreams and eventuating in the murder of his pilot. His Jaguar spirit leads him to safety. Upon returning to America he is asked by a drug company to return to Haiti and investigate the process of "Zombification" as proof of a man being brought back from the dead has been discovered and the Americans of course would love to know how it is done.

In Haiti Dr Allen meets a beautiful female psychiatrist and together they become embroiled in a world of good vs evil voodoo style in search of this miracle which is in the form of a powder.

However, their is evil at work in the form of a very nasty voodoo witchdoctor, who unfortunately also happens to be Chief of Police in the very much oppressed Haiti.

This was a great film. I only just purchased and watched it for the first time on DVD for $6.95 AU, at that price I wasn't expecting much - Reviews I have read regarding this film dubbed it dissapointing, but I found it to be highly entertaining.

The film is eerie, the acting is excellent. I have found in most reviews that people have complained that the film is far-fetched and doesn't make sense. Well, in my opinion - that is the nature of voodoo -it is un-explainable and to a skeptical mind is silly, but there have been many accounts in real life of voodoo magic and it's power and this film was based on some such accounts.

The film starts of a little slow and can be described as a bit messy. However, as the plot unfolds, not only are we watching an eerie film about the supernatural, we are also watching an action packed political thriller. This is a very unusual film. There is just enough blood and gore to entertain the slasher fans, but not too much discourage the general film appreciating public.

As opposed to common belief, I found the story-line of this film to be tight, different and utterly engaging.