The Believers

New York City, 1987: a memorable place and year for noirish cinematic voodoo. Occult-loving audiences were first given Alan Parker’s period piece Angel Heart, followed by John Schlesinger’s more contemporary The Believers—the lone horror movie made by the English director best known for the likes of Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, and one of only a handful of forays into the genre by Martin Sheen (the Stephen King adaptations The Dead Zone and Firestarter of course being among them).

Here, Sheen wholly departs from playing the antagonist to star as the ultra-sympathetic Cal, who unexpectedly becomes a single father when his wife is electrocuted in a random kitchen accident, as he and his young son Chris look on in terror. Setting the tone with such a jolt sends the clear message that we’re in for an intense ride. And it’s punctuated with a smash cut to a scene of parents sacrificing their boy in an elaborate voodoo ritual… all before the opening credits have ended!

Attempting to start over, the father and son relocate from Minneapolis to New York, where Cal, now working as a psychologist for the NYPD, is immediately put on cases involving ritualistic child deaths. “Weird fucking city you moved into,” police lieutenant McTaggert (Robert Loggia) says to him. It’s not only weird but highly perilous, and he rightly questions his choice of bringing his son there, as it seems witchcraft (brujería) is being performed in every corner of the city. In Central Park, Cal and Chris find animal remains indicating sacrifice along with assorted other religious mementos. At home, their Spanish-speaking housekeeper, Carmen (Carla Pinza), is tuned into the healing-based religion Santería. She even casts a love spell on Cal and his new landlady/romantic interest (Helen Shaver). But he stupidly doesn’t listen to her claims that she’s protecting their home, or her warnings that they’re in terrible danger.

The Believers, adapted from Nicholas Condé’s 1982 novel The Religion, is a genuinely chilling—and severely underappreciated—film, rich with mood and character. You’ll likely never forget the cop, wonderfully played by Jimmy Smits, stabbing himself in the stomach, claiming there are snakes inside him (at the morgue, snakes in fact are found slithering around his innards); or the spiders scurrying from an open boil on a woman’s cheek; or the terrifying voodoo ceremonies led by Palo, who can hypnotize people with his eyes and mimic anyone’s voice. In this role, Malick Bowens embodies prime movie villainy; I definitely had nightmares about him as a child. And scariest of all is the notion, so crucial in Rosemary’s Baby and the like, that it’s impossible to know whom to trust at every turn.