Weekly Film Rec: The Serpent and the Rainbow

Three to four years ago, I rented about seven horror movies to binge on over a weekend (for some reason, even though I was renting DVDs, I picture myself carrying a pile of those thick VHS Blockbuster boxes). Off the top of my head, I can only remember three of them for vastly different reasons. One was Eli Roth's Hostel, which I hated pretty passionately (and which wasn't nearly as gruesome as I'd expected [I'd expected some pretty intense gruesome-osity], so that was nice). Another was The Hitcher, which I didn't know much about aside from the fact that Roger Ebert hated it, genre fans loved it, and it starred C. Thomas Howell who I didn't have much of an opinion about aside from thinking of him painted black in Soul Man. That film blew me away from all angles. The third film in this memory trilogy was The Serpent and the Rainbow.

The reason The Serpent and the Rainbow sticks in my mind is because I never got to watch it. The weekend ran out and my roommate copied and burnt the DVD for me to watch, but I never got around to it and the disc got beat to hell and thrown out (it's not illegal to copy DVDs if no one ever watches them, right?). Finally, after years of anticipation (and prompting from a season 2 X-Files episode), I moved the film to the top of my Netflix queue.

Even after all these years, I still didn't know what the film was about aside from a powder that paralyzes people temporarily and nearly shuts down the body so it's impossible to tell if they are living or not. This leads to premature burial and the old voodoo-style zombie. The Serpent and the Rainbow is pretty clunky at times and has a few fairly jarring transitions, but damned if it isn't an effective horror film.

If there is one thing Wes Craven excels at, it's blurring line between the real world and the dream world. This could easily be The Nightmare on Elm Street 3.5: Freddy Goes to Haiti. The dream imagery is absolutely terrifying (I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares of that corpse bride). But as terrifying as the dreams are, the villain, played by Zakes Mokae, is even more intense. I barely felt safe watching him (and given his power, he probably knew I was watching).

It's rare that a horror film gets under my skin anymore and The Serpent and the Rainbow definitely achieved that. For that alone, I have to make it this week's film rec.