This is so truly awful and I enjoyed it so very, very much. A patently ludicrous cult thriller about Devil worship and human sacrifice in which Martin Sheen screams a lot, The Believers occupies a strange space between camp and grim mean-spiritedness (the opening scene seems specifically designed to have traumatically scarred me as a child, which is exactly what it did).
Well-directed by a slumming John Schlesinger, who keeps the pace moving and employs a skilled visual touch, The Believers is to Rosemary’s Baby or The Omen what microwave pizza is to a fresh pie – clearly inferior, but still oddly satisfying. It is certainly never boring and, in spite of itself, it’s actually pretty creepy at times (I’m referring to both The Believers and microwave pizza here). Worth it alone for a finale in which Sheen saves his thong-wearing son from tribal sacrifice.
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