- Directed by Wes Craven
- Written by Wade Davis, Richard Maxwell, Adam Rodman
- Stars Bill Pullman, Cathay Tyson, Zakes Mokae
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNRnOcW5yqs
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a bit low-key. It’s inspired by true events, and they beefed things up from reality like they generally do in such movies, but not enough. It’s beyond a documentary but very tame as a horror movie.
Synopsis
In the legends of voodoo, the Serpent is the symbol of Earth. The Rainbow is a symbol of Heaven. Between the two, all creatures must live and die. But because he has a soul, Man can be trapped in a terrible place where death is only the beginning.
We begin in Haiti, in 1978. We watch a group of men carrying a child-sized coffin. They set it on fire in the middle of the street.
Elsewhere, a man dies and has a funeral. Dargent Peytraud is there, watching the man be buried. The dead man sheds a tear as they bury him.
Dr. Dennis Alan, a Harvard anthropologist, lands in his helicopter. He’s there to see a shaman for an interview. The old shaman makes him drink a potion. He wakes up being chased by a jaguar in the jungle— it just wants belly rubs. The shaman laughs as Alan rolls around, completely alone. Then dead men pull Alan down into the ground.
He eventually wakes up, sober, but he’s completely alone. He goes back to the helicopter, but the pilot is dead.
He gets home to Boston and meets Cassedy, the head of a pharmaceutical company. Cassedy asks what he knows about zombification. Turns out, Alan brought back drug samples they’d never seen before. They show him the man we saw buried earlier, Christophe, but that was seven years ago, and he’s been seen recently, walking around. He’s a zombie, and Cassedy wants to know how it’s done.
Cassedy thinks it’s a totally new kind of anesthesia. He wants Alan to return and get some of that to duplicate and sell.
Alan heads back to Haiti and meets Dr. Duchamp. Duchamp shows him Margrite, a woman who “died” fifteen years ago. She also takes him to see Lucien Celine, a high voodoo priest. Alan sees Peytraud and recognizes him from his vision— a black magician and chief of the secret police.
They go to a cemetery that night and interrupt some grave robbers. Alan accuses Duchamp of scamming him for money. Then they run into Christophe, the talking zombie. He recounts his own funeral and something about poison that goes through the skin.
Lucien warns them to stay out of all this; it’s too dangerous. Duchamp wants him to tell the name of the man who makes the “magic powder.” The man they talk to, Mozart, next wants $500 for the magic powder. He demonstrates his powder on a goat, which soon falls over, dead. Alan promises to pay for the powder tomorrow when the goat gets up again.
Alan has a nightmare that evening, and the following day, he and Dr. Duchamp have sex in a cave.
The government suddenly declares martial law, and everything gets very militaristic. Duchamp says that Christophe had spoken out for freedom, and the government didn’t like it, so they made an example out of him.
Alan gets called into the police station and talks to Peytraud. He warns Alan that Duchamp is a radical, as is Christophe. Peytraud knows all about Alan’s activities, but Alan plays dumb. As torture sounds come out of the back room, Peytraud threatens him.
They go to Mozart in the morning, and Alan calls him an idiot – he knows the revived goat is different. He drinks the entire bottle of the drug, which is fake. No, he switched bottles at the last minute; he didn’t really take the drug, which is probably just some common poison. Mozart comes out and says he can make the real powder, but there are some rules— Alan must help make the powder.
Mozart, Alan, and Duchamp go to the cemetery that night. Alan digs up the body of a dead witch.
The police attack and take Alan prisoner. He wakes up strapped to a chair, and Peytraud prepares to torture him. Then he does torture him before dumping him on the road.
That night, they continue to make the “magic” powder. The process will take another night. Mozart also warns Alan about Peytraud’s revenge.
That night, Alan dreams of being buried alive, and when he wakes up, A woman’s in bed with him, beheaded. He’s arrested again. Peytraud knows exactly what Alan dreamed last night.
The police march Alan onto a plane at gunpoint. Mozart gets onto the plane and gives him the jar of magic powder.
Back in Boston, Alan and Cassedy analyze the drug, and it’s pretty amazing. The powder makes a person appear dead for twelve hours, but then they wake up. They want to call it “Zombinol.”
Alan tells his boss that he can’t get through to Duchamp on the phone, so something must be wrong. He’s warned to stay away, but he still has creepy hallucinations. Cassidy’s wife attacks Alan and goes into convulsions, but she had nothing to do with any of this.
Alan goes back to Haiti. “He’s going to get me wherever I am,” he says. Lucien grabs him from the airport; he’s been hiding and protecting Duchamp. Peytraud does a spell somewhere, and Lucien dies painfully. He also has Mozart beheaded. Someone spits the yellow powder on Alan, who soon falls down.
“Don’t let them bury me; I’m not dead!”
He hears and sees everything as the doctor pronounces him dead. Peytraud tells the doctor that he’s made all the arrangements. He puts a tarantula in the coffin before sealing it up and burying it.
Sometime later, we hear Alan wake up in the coffin and scream. Christophe, of all people, digs him up.
There are radio reports of revolution, and the dictator has fled the country. Alan staggers into town as Duchamp is being executed. When Peytraud hears the people outside revolting, he commands Alan to come to him.
Duchamp smashes the container that holds Lucien’s soul, and Peytraud starts seeing a jaguar chasing him until he bursts out in flames and dies.
Suddenly, Peytraud jumps through the wall and fights Alan one more time. His own torture chamber chair eventually attacks him and pulls him down to Hell. Or that’s what Alan saw in his mind anyway.
Commentary
I watched this when it first hit theaters, and it was marketed as a zombie movie; I was sorely disappointed. This time around, I knew what it was going to be about.
It’s more of a drama with some horror-like nightmares. There are no real zombies here, as it’s based on a nonfiction book. There’s a small bit of magic, but nothing that couldn’t be explained non-magically with hallucinations.
It’s too realistic to be a fun horror film, and too magical/factionalized to be a documentary. It’s well-made and well-acted, but it leaves a lot to be desired as a horror film.