Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Netflix’s new serial killer series The Serpent made me afraid to leave the house.
Okay, sure, that’s nothing new. Most of us have been panicked at the thought of “outside” since the COVID-19 pandemic began over a year ago. But The Serpent made me afraid for a wholly different reason. Following the crimes of Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim), aka the “Bikini Killer,” The Serpent details all the terrifying ways people are vulnerable when they are far from home. It made me wholly terrified to travel ever again and I say that as someone who loves travel.
The Serpent tells the chilling tale of Charles Sobhraj across intersecting timelines. The real Bikini Killer was born Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father in Saigong 1944. He was later raised between France and French Indochina by his mother and her later French boyfriend. Disaffected within his own family and possibly psychopathic, the young Sobhraj embraced a life of crime. Petty theft soon evolved into elaborate cons, until he eventually found himself on the lam in the 1970s. At this time he developed a number of aliases and financed his luxurious lifestyle by conning young tourists into believing him to be a well-connected gem broker. Along for the ride at this point? His French-Canadian girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman).
The Serpent shows how a desperate Sobhraj found himself forced to kill at first to keep an irate mark quiet and then how he turned it into a lifestyle. Sobhraj targeted idealistic backpackers in Asia, stealing their money and documents, poisoning them, and even drowning them to keep his own con going. Part of it was survival-based, but some of it was Sobhraj himself sneering at the hippie lifestyle. In fact, he used the generous spirit of these backpackers against them. It’s easier to trust a stranger if you yourself are a trustworthy person.
While The Serpent is ostensibly a crime drama following both the horrific manner in which Sobhraj’s actions cooly escalated and the work of Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle) and his wife Angela (Ellie Bamber) to bring him to justice, to me it was a terrifying warning to not be so blasé about my travel. I love to travel and in the past I have often traveled alone. I’ve taken solo trips to Ireland, sleeping in a noisy hostel, and vacationed before the pandemic on the Portuguese island of Madeira. I’ve taken every precaution possible — right down to sticking to a hard itinerary that I’ve shared with family members — but being in a foreign nation leaves anyone vulnerable.
The Serpent follows various backpackers and tourists like they’re a hunter’s prey. We see them innocently minding their own business, all the while unaware they are in someone’s hungry sights. Sobhraj and his accomplices were able to kill so many because they didn’t attack from the front, but aimed straight for a person’s heart. They befriended their marks and earned trust. Even if I think I can handle myself on metropolitan streets, that’s because my eye is out for the obvious attack. A pickpocket, creepster, or violent person. I could easily fall for the charms of a killer like Sobhraj.
The Serpent might be trying to be a slick crime thriller but it really just made me paranoid to travel again. COVID might very well be on its way to being eradicated, but there’s no vaccine against sociopathic serial killers.
The Serpent is now streaming on Netflix.
