YMMV / The Believers

• Adaptation Displacement: The film is rather better-known than The Religion, the 1982 novel that inspired it. However, the film in turn is Overshadowed by Controversy as detailed below.
• Complete Monster: Palo is a practitioner and shaman of a malevolent version of brujería (witchcraft) of the Santería religion. Spreading his influence into New York, Palo corrupts many of the city's rich and powerful into the sacrificial murder of their own children for more power, and gains a large following. When Tom Lopez, a cop infiltrating the cult, discovers the truth, Palo uses his dark magic to drive him mad with paranoia and later suicide; he also torments Lieutenant McTaggert into eventually killing himself when he too discovers the truth. The cult plans to initiate Cal Jamison by having him sacrifice his son Chris, with Palo hospitalizing Cal's girlfriend Jessica by putting spider eggs in her makeup, causing spiders to crawl out of a blister on her face. When Palo's supposed surrogate mother comes to her senses and attempts to warn Cal, Palo murders her too. When Cal defies the cult to save his son, Palo murders Cal's friend Marty in the ensuing chase, before trying to kill Cal himself.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Chris luring Palo into falling and being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice in the climax.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: This film is probably best known for being regularly watched by and an influence on Adolfo Constanzo, a Serial Killer and leader of a drug cartel/Cult in Matamoros which practised Human Sacrifice.
• The Woobie: Pretty much most of the leading cast:
  • Cal loses his wife at the beginning of the film after spilled milk on the floor and a faulty coffee pot complete a circuit that electrocutes her while he watches, unable to do anything to stop it. He moves back to New York City to try and recover from that loss, and winds up afoul of a voodoo cult of rich bureaucrats. He finds a new love in Jessica Halliday, and she gets cursed. (She gets better.) His in-laws are part of the aforementioned cult, and they want him to sacrifice his son for prosperity and join the cult. He stumbles across the dead body of his mother-in-law after she got cold feet and tried to save Chris. He gets kidnapped, drugged, and almost coerced into killing his son.
  • Jessica: Gets romantically involved with Cal, ends up a target of the cult, and almost dies after a voodoo ritual puts a boil on her face that hatches spiders. The situation affects her so completely that at the end of the film, after settling down with Cal and starting a new family out on a farm, it's revealed in the stinger that she's practicing voodoo herself, in an attempt to prevent them all from being harmed by the cult ever again.
  • McTaggart: Watches all of his usual police training become useless due to the type of enemy he's facing. After seeing what the cult did to Lopez, he panics, closes the investigation, blames it on an innocent man, but still gets a voodoo ritual put on him that leads him into suicide. He dies in clothes he's been in for days, unable to move his legs, and surrounded by garbage, as he likely had to drag himself around to get food and drink.
  • Lopez: Stumbles onto the first voodoo ritual. He knows what voodoo is. They steal his badge. He freaks, knowing what they are capable of. A ritual is done that puts live snakes in his BODY, and he fatally stabs himself after he feels them moving.
  • Chris: Probably the biggest woobie of all. He witnesses his mother's electrocution, and then has to deal with Cal's romantic feelings for Jessica. His grandparents turn out to be members of the very cult being investigated, and his grandfather wants Cal to sacrifice him in order to join the cult. He gets kidnapped, witnesses his father seemingly about to kill him, (Cal kills his evil grandfather instead) he's then kidnapped again by Caulder, attempting to finish the job, and has to essentially kill Palo himself.

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