The Believers (1987)

Directed by John Schlesinger ('Midnight Cowboy', 'The Falcon and the Snowman') and adapted by 'Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost from the 1982 Nicholas Conde novel 'The Religion', 'The Believers' stars Martin Sheen as a recently widowed (we see he's wife tonally unusual death in the opening sequence) police psychologist who relocates from Minnesota to New York City with his young son. Once there he becomes involved in an investigation into a series of ritual murders lead by detective Robert Loggia as well as a romance with attractive land lady Helen Shaver. As Roger Ebert said in his very negative review of the film, certain religions never get a positive portal on screen and Voodo is one of them. The moment that plot element becomes apparent in the story you more or less know where things are going, and the film in many ways trods a familiar trajectory. It does a good job of creating as sense of things being off, of weirdness and unease, and a better sense of low level tension then it probably could have achieved under lesser hands. I was never really bored. The film ends, spoiler, with the discovery that an cadre of the cities elite are responsible for the murders, an effort to appease ancient Gods and benefit themselves finically and so forth. The film has a 'high trash' quality, a sense of quality that for a time distracts from how bonkers the story really is. The more I think about it the less it seems to hold up, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't largely work for me in the moment. I'm always happy to see Richard Masur pop up in something. **1/2