The Believers (1987)

People are voting emotionally.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Although a thriller, and a disturbing one at that, this is also a meditation on how people who are searching or in need of something outside of their regular lives, can be easily sucked into dangerous ideology. It can be terrorism, racism, or anarchism; here, it is a religious cult. Robert Loggia and Martin Sheen are a Police Lieuetenant and a Psychotherapist, respectively, who investigate when an NYPD detective goes off the rails after finding the body of an eight year old boy on a sacrificial altar. The deeper they go, the more personal it gets, until Sheen's own eight year old son, played by Harley Cross, is caught up in the affair.

A good director John Schlesinger ("Midnight cowboy" , "Marathon man") plus good actor Martin Sheen ("Apocalypse now") plus interesting subject - voo doo. This is one promising combination , isn't it ? Unfortunately the ending result is rather bad.Martin Sheen gives a good performance. The movie does give you a some knowledge about voo doo. There are some nice thrilling scenes (the beginning , the ending , the scene with the snakes and the scene with the bees). Those are the good things in this movie.The movie isn't unfortunately scary . It isn't horrifying enough just to insert images of bloody headless chicken corpses and African tribes performing silly dance rituals. The movie can't decide if it wants to have supernatural elements in it or to be a thriller. "The believers" is also too long and have too many sub plots. There is also too much soap opera in a movie that should be scary and dark. There is no tension or atmosphere and aside from Sheen the acting isn't anything special. The dialogues are forgettable and the screenplay is rather bad convoluted.Alan Parker's "Harry Angel" is far superior to "The Believers". It's dark , scary , has good performances and interesting story. "The Believers" is not a complete waste of time , however it is overlong, slightly pretentious with a flat detective story. There are some good elements here , however it is a disappointment. I give it 4/10.

Police psychiatrist Cal Jamison (an excellent and sympathetic performance by Martin Sheen) and his son Chris (a remarkably fine and mature portrayal by Harley Cross) move to New York City after Cal's wife gets killed in a freak kitchen accident. Cal assists in the investigation of a series of brutal child murders and uncovers a sinister age-old religious cult that practices ritualistic child sacrifices. Naturally, both Cal and Chris find themselves in considerable jeopardy from said cult. Director John Schlesinger, working from a bold, smart and gripping script by Mark Frost, relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, expertly maintains a potently eerie and upsetting tone which becomes more increasingly scary and unnerving as the narrative unfolds towards its chilling conclusion, creates real credibility by grounding the premise in a thoroughly plausible everyday world, makes inspired and effective use of the gritty Big Apple locations, and even delivers stinging spot-on commentary on the darker aspects of religious faith and the ruthless measures some folks will go to in order to ensure wealth and success (the cult members are business people who sacrificed their own kids to obtain tremendous fiscal gain and prosperity). The bang-up acting from the uniformly sterling cast rates as another substantial asset, with especially stand-out work from Helen Shaver as Cal's feisty landlady Jessica Halliday, the always great Robert Loggia as hard-nosed homicide detective Lieutenant Sean McTaggert, Richard Masur as Cal's jolly lawyer buddy Marty Wertheimer, a marvelously twitchy Jimmy Smits as edgy, paranoid undercover cop Tom Lopez, Harris Yulin as prominent self-made business tycoon Robert Calder, and Malick Bowens as frightening powerful high priest Palo. Moreover, this movie scores bonus points for tackling the disturbing subject of child sacrifice in an uncompromisingly grim and straightforward way; the brief shots of mutilated murdered children's' bodies in particular are truly shocking. Robert Muller's slick cinematography gives the picture an attractive glossy look. J. Peter Robinson's spooky'n'shivery score also does the spine-tingling trick. A superior fright film.

Voodoo is quite an interesting topic, and as such there are many movies on the topic, many of which are very good; which means that all the movies based on voodoo generally have a lot to live up to. The Believers benefits from a good cast, a reputable director and an obviously sizable budget - but unfortunately, it doesn't amount to a sum of it's parts, mostly due to the fact that a lot of it plays out rather slowly and is quite boring - which is fairly surprising considering that director John Schlesinger was the man behind classic thrillers such as Marathon Man. The film is based on a book by Nicholas Conde and focuses on a widowed father named Cal Jamison who takes his son to live in Manhattan. Cal gets a job with the New York Police Department as a psychiatrist for troubled police officers. It's on his first call out, to help save a suicidal police officer that he comes into contact with a strange cult that has skinned a child alive. From there, the film focuses on a series of strange and eerie events that all seem to focus on the people around the lead character...The main problem with this movie is undoubtedly the length of it - the director obviously assumed that there was enough material to fill the nearly two hour running time, but unfortunately that isn't the case and the result is a film with a lot of dull moments. The lead role is taken by Martin Sheen who does a good job of fleshing out his character and getting the audience behind him. This, however, is not matched by the plot - which doesn't ever do enough to get the audience fully behind it, which is a shame as there are plenty of good ideas going on in it. The film can easily be compared to the likes of Angel Heart and Rosemary's Baby - but clearly it is not even nearly on the same level as the aforementioned classics. To its credit, the film does not flinch too much when it comes to showing blood and gore - skinned kids and spiders crawling out of a woman's cheek are among the highlights. Overall, The Believers is not a complete dead loss by any means; but it's not a great film either and I wouldn't recommend anyone goes out of their way to see it.