John Schlesinger's horror-thriller, "The Believers," is a watchable, sometimes gripping film that suffers from a muddled plot and histrionic highs before coming back down to Earth with a creepy, little epilogue. Its pieces do not all fit well together, but the film makes for a serviceable chiller.
Martin Sheen plays a police therapist who moves to New York after the tragic death of his wife. There, he and his son get embroiled in domestic melodrama, grisly animal and human killings, and a some kind of cult plot. There are a whole lot of narrative threads, and, though the film works hard to keep them all in line, the story ends up tangled.
Sheen is solid as the quickly recovering therapist,…