6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After the death of his wife, police psychiatrist Cal Jamison moves to New York. There he has to help in the investigation of the murder of two youths, who seem to have been immolated during a cult ritual. Jamison believes it's been Voodoo and, ignoring the warnings of his housekeeper, enters the scenery and soon gets under their influence. They try to get him to sacrifice his own son...
Starring: Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Harley Cross, Robert Loggia, Elizabeth WilsonHorror | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
An ominous sense of foreboding suffuses The Believers from virtually its very first moments, despite the fact that there’s not much to be overtly frightened of. But with J. Peter Robinson’s slightly menacing score pulsing in an almost subliminal fashion, and the weirdly out of focus blob of a man jogging while a delivery truck trundles along behind him, director John Schlesinger somehow makes this bucolic scene of a quiet suburban dawn seem like the nascent opening of the portals to hell. Hell of a certain kind does in fact soon break loose when Schlesinger stages one of the more disturbing scenes in contemporary horror in an early sequence where psychologist Cal Jamison (Martin Sheen) and his young son Chris (Harley Cross) watch in horror as (slight spoiler) Mrs. Jamison is electrocuted to death by a malfunctioning coffee maker. (This scene had me approaching my own coffee maker with a certain amount of trepidation for days after I first saw The Believers in theaters years ago.) That sets up the film’s change of locale to New York City, where Cal works as a consultant to the New York City Police Department, helping traumatized cops come to grips with various emotional disturbances they experience. Cal has been set up in a rather tony brownstone replete with an attractive landlady named Jessica Halliday (Helen Shaver) by his buddy and attorney Marty Wertheimer (Richard Masur), who is also urging Cal to go ahead with a product liability case against the coffee maker corporation. Against these seemingly mundane if still weighty elements Schlesinger and screenwriter Mark Frost craft an initially creepy tale of atavistic magic as exemplified by voodoo, Santería or Brujería. The Believers functions in much the same milieu as the iconic Rosemary's Baby, where the sophisticated environs of New York only slightly masks an incipient evil which inexorably surrounds an initially unaware innocent.
The Believers is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is a great looking transfer with abundant detail, supported by healthy bitrates (often in the mid 30 Mbps range) that help to reveal good shadow detail in the many dark sequences. The elements betray some very occasional and negligible issues like speckling, but are in generally pristine condition. The Believers was lensed by the incredible Robby Müller (if you don't recognize his name, look him up on IMDb), an expert at lighting gritty urban environments. That grittiness is aided and abetted by a very natural looking grain field throughout this presentation, something that helps to add depth and texture to the image, again even in some highly shrouded scenes. About the only area of concern some may have here is with the overall color space. Flesh tones can appear slightly ruddy at times and some scenes have a slight tilt toward blue, but these are niggling concerns in a very nice and organic presentation.
The Believers offers a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix that provides ample support for the film's dialogue and its nicely done score by J. Peter Robinson, a set of cues that wisely understates the horror aspect and works on an almost subliminal level at times. The film's climactic showdown includes some great sound effects like escaping jets of steam, and those ring with authenticity. Fidelity is excellent throughout the presentation and there are no issues of any kind to report.
I personally find The Believers to be a generally riveting experience for its first two acts. It's not every film that can make you look askance at things like a milk truck or a coffee maker. The surreptitious magic aspect may remind some of similarly themed pieces like the aforementioned Rosemary's Baby or even Angel Heart, and like those films, The Believers has a palpably unsettling mood. But despite standout performances by Sheen and little Cross (contrast this kid's geniune work with the less fulfilling acting by Susan Swift in Twilight Time's simultaneously released Audrey Rose), The Believers ultimately descends into such silliness that it can't be taken seriously. Technical merits are very strong, and if you don't mind an increasingly goofy last half hour or so, The Believers comes Recommended.
Collector's Edition
1988
1959
2019
1977
Unrated
2008
2019
2015
Collector's Edition
1983
1959
Warner Archive Collection / Includes Mystery of the Wax Museum in SD
1953
2005
2016
Collector's Edition | + Director's Cut on BD
1990
2011
2023
2018
2019
2017
2016
1999