The Believers

 2/4

Starring: Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Harley Cross, Robert Loggia, Elizabeth Wilson, Lee Richardson, Harris Yulin, Carmen Pinza, Malick Bowens, Richard Masur, Jimmy Smits

Rated R (probably for Disturbing Violence and Rituals, Language and Some Nudity)

Not to be confused with the 2002 film "The Believer" with Ryan Gosling

"The Believers" has just about everything it needs to be a great chiller: effective performances, a spooky story, and scenes of real terror and dread.  What is does not have is a good screenplay to exploit these elements (some of which are top-notch).  Watching this movie is compelling but ultimately frustrating because it's obvious just how good it could have been with just a little more TLC.  The pieces are definitely there.

Cal Jamison's (Sheen) wife has recently died in a tragic accident.  Unlike most movie characters who suffer unspeakable tragedy, Cal moves into the city rather than leaving it.  He sets up a nice practice as a police psychiatrist and works on healing his son and undergoing a tentative romance with his landlady, Jessica (Shaver).  One night a local detective names McTaggert (Loggia) brings him in to treat an officer who has apparently lost his mind.  After discovering the grisly, ritualistic murder of a young boy, Tom Lopez (Smits) is babbling nonsense and terrified beyond all comprehension.  Cal can't get much out of him, but when another body turns up, he begins to fear that this is part of a dark ritual of Santeria.

There are some good things about "The Believers."  There really are.  Martin Sheen, who never gets the recognition he deserves, turns in a nicely played performance as the everyman trying to get his life in order.  He's a guy that's easy to root for.  The story hints at horrors too terrible to imagine.  And the main villain, a man named Palo (Bowens), only has to appear on screen to raise someone's nape hairs.

Unfortunately the screenplay, based on the book "The Religion" by Nicholas Conde, is a joke.  A movie like this is, by its very nature, a lot of smoke and mirrors.  That would be fine if they were put together to create a convincing illusion.  But they aren't.  Half of what goes on isn't explained.  It feels like a lot of the exposition explaining the plot was left on the cutting room floor in exchange for more time spent with Cal rebuilding his life.  To be fair, these scenes do work and there's some decent chemistry between Sheen and his co-star Helen Shavers.  But let's be honest.  No one goes to a movie like this for sentiment or realism.  They go to be told a spooky story.  It kicks into high gear at the halfway mark, but you get the sense that everyone is acting on information that the audience never sees.

I really wanted this movie to work.  I was urging it on, hoping that things would be explained enough so that I could get swept into the story and feel the growing sense of horror.  Experiences like that are what I go to the movies for.  Alas, it was not to be.  Director John Schlesinger tries vainly to keep things afloat, and he manages to do so for about the first 45 minutes.  But then it just falls apart.  I gave up trying to follow the plot and instead just waited until everything was resolved.  It eventually did before my patience truly ran out, although I never knew what the point of it all was.

You'd think that a horror movie would at least bother to explain the motives, but I guess not.

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