The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: The Believers (1987), directed by John Schlesinger

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Do You Fear For Your Child?" by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

     The 30s saw the rise of movie monsters, and the 50s were big on aliens and giant insects, but in the late 60s and 70s it was all about the supernatural. Ghosts, demons, cults of various shapes and sizes, whether it was an instant classic like The Exorcist or a experimental flop like Incubus movie audiences just ate it right up. They still did even after the 70s in fact, as horror shifted to tales of serial killers and android assassins, and still later with Home Improvement. Even if people don’t really believe in any of it, the idea of it is still fairly popular, if the multitudes of ghost hunting shows on television is any indication. Turns out Dungeons & Dragons and Satan were connected after all, but only as cogs in the pop culture machine.

     In 1987 John Schlesinger, director of films like Marathon Man and the excellent Midnight Cowboy, decided to jump into the horror game with this film, The Believers. Martin Sheen stars as Cal Jamison, a police therapist who moves to the big city with his young son Chris after his wife dies in a freak spilled milk/coffee maker accident. Things seem to be going well, Cal’s met a lady friend in the form of Jessica (Helen Shaver), Chris meets a maid in the form of Carmen, everyone’s happy. For about a second a least, until Chris discovers an odd looking shell next to a ritual animal sacrifice while playing at the park with his dad. Suddenly Cal gets caught up in a bizarre case, one involving a emotionally disturbed cop and a dead child, murdered in some kind of bizarre ritual. It all seems to tie into a religion known as Santeria, born from precolonial Africa but still practiced today, an unfamiliar blend of paganism and Judeo-Christian imagery which to a lapsed Catholic like Cal seems like a load of hogwash. Just because Cal isn’t interested in Santeria doesn’t mean that Santeria isn’t interested in him though, and soon Cal finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a world that he refused to accept as real. A world that has something particularly special in mind when it comes to his son Chris. More special than dairy, even.

     The thing about The Believers is that it takes a lot of cues from horror movies of the past, particularly The Omen and The Wicker Man. Skeptic protagonists, supernatural conspiracies, dead kids, the whole nine yards. Which isn’t really a problem, a lot of films are informed by the past, but The Believers apes those films too well, to the point where it picks up the issues those films had as well. Issues like the protagonist taking ridiculously long to admit that shit is going wrong, plots that seem a bit overly complicated for what the antagonists are trying to accomplish, a slow burn with a runtime to match, etc. Things that you didn’t notice or could forgive when it came to those movies, but grate a little with The Believers, which hasn’t built up the level of goodwill as those films have.

     Not to say that it’s bad per se, it’s just...ok. The acting is fine, the cinematography is clean with plenty of great shots, but for some reason the believability factor (ironically) isn’t quite there, as it was in films like The Wicker Man. That film almost seemed real in its own way, The Believers is a little bit too polished for its own good. Not to mention the noticeably awkward pacing. We spend about an hour and twenty minutes on this slow burn figuring out the case thing, Cal resolutely against the idea of magic being real and then like a snap of the fingers he’s murdering chickens and casting magic spells. There’s no real build-up to it, in fact in the previous scene he’s screaming at a poor woman for using magic, so it comes as bipolar and an awkward concession to move the plot forward. I mean it’s your movie John, if you wanted extra time to more properly document Cal’s character arc you could have just done that. You’re already asking about 2 hours of your audience’s time, what’s an extra 30 minutes or so?

     Seeing as it is ok rather than bad however, and not nearly as racist as you’d expect it to be given its subject matter, The Believers gets a tentative recommendation. There’s not much that comes to mind to say about it, beyond that it’s watchable and won’t leave you utterly annoyed by the end of it. However it’s not really top of the queue watch material, especially if you haven’t seen The Omen, The Wicker Man or even Rosemary’s Baby yet. While it might be one of those films that needs multiple viewings for it to really hit home, aswas the case for me and The Omen actually, I don’t know if you’re gonna want to spend your Halloween watching just one movie. You do you though.