This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Reviews of The Believers 1987
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This is a movie about a psychiatrist getting mixed up with a religious group that is using human sacrifice to gain power. It definitely held my attention the entire time, so that is a good sign. More importantly, the director knew how to keep the story interesting and grounded, so when some of the more shocking or hard to believe bits showed up, they were bad ass. Novel and offbeat.
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always enjoy watching a nice cult movie (literally, a full on cult is included in this one). they also always share so many similarities with conspiracy movies since there's always some weird web of deceit surrounding everything. guess they're basically one and the same. this also tended to feel pretttttyyyy pretty racist, not that i'm surprised given the time period. honestly the opening scene with the wife getting owned is probably the best part of the whole movie. way too…
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Pretty dull black magic nonsense, has a few decent character actors and a couple of intense scenes of hilarious acting.
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Has a nice Martin sheen to it, but the voodoo elements never feel remotely possible.
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The inciting incident here is Martin Sheen's wife being electrocuted in about a quarter inch of milk on the kitchen floor? Great 80s NYC textures in this, lovingly photographed by Robby Müller.
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Horror thrillers often reflect cultural anxieties and there's nothing like the 1980s triple whammy of single parents, Satanic Panic, and scary immigrants to spook some studio executive into greenlighting this bit of mediocrity.
Martin Sheen plays a psychiatrist who gets sucked into a sinister underworld of Santeria cults and human sacrifice in New York City. It's pretty standard "white people under attack by exotic brown people magic" stuff and worth skipping. It's interesting to me that it came out the same year as "Angel Heart", which navigated similar tropes so well.
This is the first thing I can recall Jimmy Smits in, so there's that. -
Martin Sheen, playing the world's angriest therapist (seriously, he flies into several psychotic rages even before any of the supernatural elements make their presence known), stands as the only line of defense of American Christian Society against a sinister cabal of dark-skinned, evil magic wielding foreigners who are seeking to sacrifice (what else?) white children.
Well shot, & generally well acted (Sheen does good work with his absurd character & Jimmy Smits absolutely kills it in a small role) but every bit as offensive & goofy as it sounds. I imagine Q-Anon types would really dig this, though.
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Had me fucking running laps! The electrocution was so fucking understated and awkward and that really made it fucking rock. Insane movie. ROSEMARY'S BABY meets... CUTTER'S WAY? ANGELHEART meets EXORCIST 3? Sheen was incredible.
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I’d never seen any of the lurid thrillers to which John Schlesinger occasionally turned his hand, but based on this he did have a certain flair for them (were the opening shots of an early morning jogger meant to remind us of “Marathon Man”?) This has a flesh-crawling money shot scene that no-one who sees it will ever forget (which is more than some films manage) even if for the most part it fails to transcend its basic tawdriness.
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Underrated