Black Snake Moan

Black Snake Moan (2006) is a drama with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci that you can watch online on iFILM. Director Craig Brewer sets it deep in the American South, where the blues clings to your skin as much as the heat does.

Lazarus, a retired bluesman, lives alone after his wife walks out, holding on to his faith and his guitar. One morning he finds Rae beaten and half-dead by the roadside, a young local woman with a bad name, driven by childhood trauma and a hunger for men she can never satisfy. Lazarus decides to save her his own way: he chains her to the radiator in his house to drive out what he believes is her sickness. It sounds lurid, yet the film turns that brutal setup into a surprisingly tender story of two damaged people. Jackson plays and sings the blues himself, Ricci goes all the way out on a limb, and Justin Timberlake turns up as Rae's boyfriend.

This is Southern gothic soaked in Delta blues, made for anyone drawn to raw, uncomfortable tales of redemption. It splits audiences clean down the middle: some see provocation, others a rare portrait of mercy with no sugar in it. Stream Black Snake Moan (2006) online on iFILM.