Great film! Some rather large plot holes that could have been easily avoided, if one were going to be honest, and at times the thing is frustratingly obscure and careless with logic. But Believers has a very creepy air, the acting is generally superb, and the ending is - if predictable a light year off - totally BRILLIANT.
The movie plays like a very long episode of The Outer Limits (the 60s original, not the wretched colour revivals), and that's no bad thing. I suspect this movie played better outside of the US - American audiences tend to like everything explained with a minimum of ambiguity, and this movie has a very cavalier attitude towards plot information. Bad plot flaws damage the overall impact - the incredibly half-hearted search for the paramedics, the far too swift 'sex conversion' of the hero's buddy, the unexplained resurrection of a woman cult member, the badly answered question of why the paramedics needed to be kidnapped at all etc. But, ahhh, I've seen A-films that have made worse mistakes.
Believers is most effective in the little details...the ever present loud speakers in the compound, constantly burbling propaganda you can only half hear, the glassy expressions on the faces of the cult members, the fact that these weird people are scary because they are NOT overtly evil. Perhaps more important is the fact that, like the Leader with the hero, the movie never tries to convince you to believe in what is happening...you can take it or leave it on one level or another. Comparisons with Jonestown are obvious, but the film's general tone owes a larger debt to the Aum Supreme Truth cult in Japan, with its' fetish for electronic devices and quasi-scientific esoterica, the usage of poison gas, and the idea that the charismatic leader holds a revealed "indisputable truth".
Daniel Benzali is electrifying as 'The Teacher', creating a sort of Colonel Kurtz character. The Quanta Group's second in command, who appears at the start in the TV interview, and whose name eludes me, is also superb. Check out the deleted scenes on the DVD for moments featuring both men, both apparently improvised for the most part, that are better than anything kept in the movie. Puzzling omissions. The movie also contains one of the more chilling torture scenes in recent memory, in the shape of the electro-shock 'purging' of the hero. Devoid of gore, this scene is made frightening (for me at least) by the complete lack of emotion shown by the torturers. "It's for your own good" delivered in a weary monotone is far scarier than a truckload of Texas Chainsaw evil-chuckling over a victim.
But *that* ending, a very erotic sex scene, the aforementioned EST torture moment, and a general air of weirdness and repressed hysteria, gives this film an edge. Well worth seeing.
The movie plays like a very long episode of The Outer Limits (the 60s original, not the wretched colour revivals), and that's no bad thing. I suspect this movie played better outside of the US - American audiences tend to like everything explained with a minimum of ambiguity, and this movie has a very cavalier attitude towards plot information. Bad plot flaws damage the overall impact - the incredibly half-hearted search for the paramedics, the far too swift 'sex conversion' of the hero's buddy, the unexplained resurrection of a woman cult member, the badly answered question of why the paramedics needed to be kidnapped at all etc. But, ahhh, I've seen A-films that have made worse mistakes.
Believers is most effective in the little details...the ever present loud speakers in the compound, constantly burbling propaganda you can only half hear, the glassy expressions on the faces of the cult members, the fact that these weird people are scary because they are NOT overtly evil. Perhaps more important is the fact that, like the Leader with the hero, the movie never tries to convince you to believe in what is happening...you can take it or leave it on one level or another. Comparisons with Jonestown are obvious, but the film's general tone owes a larger debt to the Aum Supreme Truth cult in Japan, with its' fetish for electronic devices and quasi-scientific esoterica, the usage of poison gas, and the idea that the charismatic leader holds a revealed "indisputable truth".
Daniel Benzali is electrifying as 'The Teacher', creating a sort of Colonel Kurtz character. The Quanta Group's second in command, who appears at the start in the TV interview, and whose name eludes me, is also superb. Check out the deleted scenes on the DVD for moments featuring both men, both apparently improvised for the most part, that are better than anything kept in the movie. Puzzling omissions. The movie also contains one of the more chilling torture scenes in recent memory, in the shape of the electro-shock 'purging' of the hero. Devoid of gore, this scene is made frightening (for me at least) by the complete lack of emotion shown by the torturers. "It's for your own good" delivered in a weary monotone is far scarier than a truckload of Texas Chainsaw evil-chuckling over a victim.
But *that* ending, a very erotic sex scene, the aforementioned EST torture moment, and a general air of weirdness and repressed hysteria, gives this film an edge. Well worth seeing.