The Believers: 07 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

Mysticism is always present in ancient religions.  It goes back to the pagan worships or the elements, animals, and the indefinable.  Human's have always sought to define the indefinable.  As the religions grow in power they begin to become organizations and that's when the mystical pasts get altered into a sort of good and evil idea.  John Schlesinger's The Believers gives that treatment to Santeria and it's dark counterpart, Brujeria (i.e. witchcraft).

The film is about a police psychiatrist, Cal (played here by Martin Sheen), who at the beginning of the film, loses his wife to a freak electric accident and in the aftermath moves with his son to New York City, not long after moving in they stumble upon a strange scene in central park followed by increasingly strange business involving Brujeria and Santeria.  All is obviously not well in New York City, but when hasn't that been the case in a horror film?  He and his son become embroiled in a strange plot which is revealed in quite a creepy and violent climax in an under construction high rise.

Formally, the film is quite well shot and edited, utilizing some excellent dolly work to build tension.  It's based on a novel, The Religion by Nicholas Conde (Robert Stuart Nathan), and adapted to the screen by Mark Frost, the Frost half of Lynch/Frost Productions which brought the world Twin Peaks, so I definitely was prepared for some weird stuff and yet some how it missed the mark.  Perhaps because the film was a bigger budget project, with some actual star power behind it, there was pressure to keep it a little safer for a more inclusive audience, but considering it's from the director of The Marathon Man, that explanation isn't really sufficient.

I'll admit that this one may be the first film of this little series where I felt that the climax justified the pacing of the film, as each event leads up to the spectacular conclusion of the Brujera.  It certainly also sets up a great feeling of paranoia, revealing further and further that there are not many people for Cal to trust, including his oldest friends.  However, certain elements of the story were just a little TOO silly for me to believe.  Again, it's an example of that: let's throw of the audience by conveniently removing a character who may or may not have been a red herring all along.  Some people like that, but I tend to read through it.  Unless, of course, the film does a better job of convincing me which, sadly, Believers did not.

That isn't to say that it's a bad film.  There are certainly many worse in this genre and I would go as far to say that it's even a good film.  I think my main issue with it is that it ultimately felt more like a police procedural than a dark magic horror film, but that's not a reason to dismiss it by any means.  It's a tough one, but luckily taste is subjective enough that one of you reading this may decide to watch it and find something I just couldn't see.

3 out of 5 skulls.