The Serpent and the Rainbow

The Serpent and the Rainbow was released in 1988 and directed by Wes Craven. Rather than simply retelling the plot, the film is worth revisiting for the characters, conflicts and ideas that give its story its identity.

Mortality and lifespan, Corporate power and Loss emerge through what the characters face and the choices they make, giving the story more to explore beyond its immediate plot. Dr. Dennis Alan, Dr. Marielle Duchamp and Dargent Peytraud do not begin the film seeing one another clearly, and watching those first impressions break down is a big part of why The Serpent and the Rainbow still works.

In 1978, a Haitian man named Christophe mysteriously dies in a French missionary clinic while a voodoo parade marches past his window.

The next morning, Christophe is buried in a traditional Catholic funeral. That detail matters because it shapes the way the characters initially see one another.

A mysterious man dressed in a suit, who was outside Christophe's hospital window on the night he died, is in attendance. From there, the film can concentrate less on explaining the setup and more on what happens between the people inside it.

As the coffin is lowered into the ground, Christophe's eyes open and tears roll down his cheeks.

Seven years later, Harvard anthropologist Dennis Alan is in the Amazon rainforest studying rare herbs and medicines with a local shaman.

The movie has more on its mind than the basic setup suggests. mortality and lifespan sits close to the centre of the film, but it is explored through the characters rather than treated like a lesson.

corporate power matters just as much. The film keeps challenging the assumptions its characters make about one another, which is where much of its emotional weight comes from.

There is also plenty here about loss and mortality. Those ideas overlap rather than sitting in separate boxes, which helps the movie feel like a story about people rather than a checklist of themes.

The film could hardly be separated from the decade that produced it. Released in 1988, it carries the attitudes, style and filmmaking rhythms of the 1980s without needing to announce them.

It also sits comfortably within the era's horror, zombie, supernatural, supernatural horror, fantasy, adventure, suspense, thriller, folk horror and mystery filmmaking, even if the movie itself is more interesting than any single genre label suggests. That is part of why it still appears in conversations about 1980s movies and 1980s horror movies. The film has become tied not only to its own story but to the wider memory of what 1980s movies felt like.

Watching The Serpent and the Rainbow now means seeing both what has lasted and what unmistakably belongs to 1988.

What still works best is the human material. Ideas around mortality and lifespan, corporate power and loss have not stopped being relevant simply because the clothes, language and cultural references belong to another era.

Some moments inevitably land differently for a modern audience. Revisiting an older film properly means enjoying what still works without pretending every choice has aged equally well.

A large part of that staying power comes from the characters. Dr. Dennis Alan, Dr. Marielle Duchamp and Dargent Peytraud are still useful shorthand for the personalities and pressures the film explores.

Carpenter's film has lasted because people continue to recognise something in it. Nostalgia helps, but nostalgia alone does not keep a movie in the conversation for decades.