ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Alondro Ok, I'm currently watching this on Comet Channel... I don't know what's supposed to be scary about this. I'm about half-way through and finding it very hard to force myself to watch any further. It's slow-paced, exaggerated, with too may scenes of just people blabbering on about things we don't see. Plot points just jump around, the tone is inconsistent as hell. It's often silly and the overacting is the only thing that elicited any emotion from me aside from boredom. It often throws in symbolism no one outside of whatever this belief system is would understand in the least. As such, there's no impact. There's no dread or tension when we have no clue why spooky music plays in response to a kid dropping a cowrie shell. What the heck? I suppose people who believe in this nonsense in reality find it frightening. For those who live in the 'real' world, it's just dull and dumb.

Maziun A good director John Schlesinger ("Midnight cowboy" , "Marathon man") plus good actor Martin Sheen ("Apocalypse now") plus interesting subject - voo doo. This is one promising combination , isn't it ? Unfortunately the ending result is rather bad.Martin Sheen gives a good performance. The movie does give you a some knowledge about voo doo. There are some nice thrilling scenes (the beginning , the ending , the scene with the snakes and the scene with the bees). Those are the good things in this movie.The movie isn't unfortunately scary . It isn't horrifying enough just to insert images of bloody headless chicken corpses and African tribes performing silly dance rituals. The movie can't decide if it wants to have supernatural elements in it or to be a thriller. "The believers" is also too long and have too many sub plots. There is also too much soap opera in a movie that should be scary and dark. There is no tension or atmosphere and aside from Sheen the acting isn't anything special. The dialogues are forgettable and the screenplay is rather bad convoluted.Alan Parker's "Harry Angel" is far superior to "The Believers". It's dark , scary , has good performances and interesting story. "The Believers" is not a complete waste of time , however it is overlong, slightly pretentious with a flat detective story. There are some good elements here , however it is a disappointment. I give it 4/10.

Woodyanders Police psychiatrist Cal Jamison (an excellent and sympathetic performance by Martin Sheen) and his son Chris (a remarkably fine and mature portrayal by Harley Cross) move to New York City after Cal's wife gets killed in a freak kitchen accident. Cal assists in the investigation of a series of brutal child murders and uncovers a sinister age-old religious cult that practices ritualistic child sacrifices. Naturally, both Cal and Chris find themselves in considerable jeopardy from said cult. Director John Schlesinger, working from a bold, smart and gripping script by Mark Frost, relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, expertly maintains a potently eerie and upsetting tone which becomes more increasingly scary and unnerving as the narrative unfolds towards its chilling conclusion, creates real credibility by grounding the premise in a thoroughly plausible everyday world, makes inspired and effective use of the gritty Big Apple locations, and even delivers stinging spot-on commentary on the darker aspects of religious faith and the ruthless measures some folks will go to in order to ensure wealth and success (the cult members are business people who sacrificed their own kids to obtain tremendous fiscal gain and prosperity). The bang-up acting from the uniformly sterling cast rates as another substantial asset, with especially stand-out work from Helen Shaver as Cal's feisty landlady Jessica Halliday, the always great Robert Loggia as hard-nosed homicide detective Lieutenant Sean McTaggert, Richard Masur as Cal's jolly lawyer buddy Marty Wertheimer, a marvelously twitchy Jimmy Smits as edgy, paranoid undercover cop Tom Lopez, Harris Yulin as prominent self-made business tycoon Robert Calder, and Malick Bowens as frightening powerful high priest Palo. Moreover, this movie scores bonus points for tackling the disturbing subject of child sacrifice in an uncompromisingly grim and straightforward way; the brief shots of mutilated murdered children's' bodies in particular are truly shocking. Robert Muller's slick cinematography gives the picture an attractive glossy look. J. Peter Robinson's spooky'n'shivery score also does the spine-tingling trick. A superior fright film.

disdressed12 i guess this movie is a bit eerie at times.it's basically about people who practice an obscure religion,with bizarre beliefs.but i've seen at least one movie quite similar to it,possibly more.so not only is there not much originality,but nothing new is done with the material.plus i pretty much figured things out from the get go.the whole movie is basically one slow build.but to what,i'm not sure.i mean there is a bit of excitement in the last 25 minutes or so.but the ending is very predictable.generally i found this movie too boring to watch right through.i had to stop it several times,and then try to continue.actually i completely stopped it at one point,until this morning,when i finally finished it.some people will like this movie,and some will not.i fall into the category of not,for the most part.the acting was good though,so that's always a bonus.even so,i give The Believers a 4/10