The Believers

Directed by John Schlesinger, The Believers follows Martin Sheen’s Cal Jamison as he and his young son (Harley Cross’ Chris) are targeted by a deadly cult that sacrifices small children in its barbaric rituals. Filmmaker Schlesinger, working from Mark Frost’s screenplay, admittedly does a terrific job of initially luring the viewer into the deliberately-paced proceedings, as The Believers kicks off with a superb pre-credits sequence that effectively establishes an atmosphere of larger-than-life creepiness – with the promising vibe undoubtedly heightened by Sheen’s first-class efforts and Robby Müller’s top-notch cinematography. It’s fairly disappointing to note, then, that the picture subsequently progresses into a lackadaisical midsection focused mostly on Cal’s far-from-enthralling investigation into the malevolent happenings, and although Schlesinger has peppered the erratic narrative with a handful of undeniably unsettling images and interludes (eg the boil on a periphery character’s face erupts with spiders), The Believers ultimately builds towards a fairly standard climax that does little to offset the movie’s relentlessly erratic feel – with the end result a decent-enough thriller in desperate need of some serious streamlining. (That epilogue is pretty fantastic, though.)

**1/2 out of ****