Analysis
Barna William Donovan notes that while there were several Satanic-themed Hollywood films in the 1970s, for example The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen film series, by the 1980s Hollywood seemed to have lost interest in the subject. He cites The Believers as one of only two noteworthy films about Devil worship created in the 1980s, along with Angel Heart (1987), and noted its similarities to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which also featured a demon-worshiping cult that abducts children and offers human sacrifices.
Donovan wrote that where Angel Heart was a period piece set in the 1940s, and so fantastic that it limited its connections to the contemporary world of the 1980s "and its fundamentalist paranoias", The Believers was set in that contemporary world. Neither film approached the subject of 1980s hysteria over Satanic ritual abuse, a conspiracy theory which generated sensationalist headlines, the villains were instead practitioners of Santería, the legitimate Afro-Caribbean religion depicted in the film as "a cult of evil that condones human sacrifice". Donovan concludes that Hollywood distanced itself from the subject matter, probably because child sexual abuse was deemed an unfit subject for popcorn entertainment.
According to John Kenneth Muir, the message of the film is that yuppies would do anything for success, including calling upon dark gods, while simultaneously fearing ethnicity. For example, a cleaning woman working for the Jamisons tries to protect Chris by using a benevolent version of Santeria; Cal fails to distinguish between good and evil magic and treats her as a threat. The film depicts Manhattan as a place where alien cultures merge and the Christian white man has reasons to fear the pagans, who may come for his children. As such, it plays on a fear for the ethnic, racial, and religious Other. According to Mercedes Cros Sandoval, the film brought both public attention and negative publicity for Santería.
The film is more typical of its decade in the negative depiction of the upper class of New York City. The cultists turn out to be members of this social class which literally sacrifice their children in exchange for "fame, wealth, and power". Their success and upward mobility is based not on business acumen, but their practice of Santeria. Muir sees this as a literal interpretation of a familiar phrase, voodoo economics.
Muir notes a few similarities with Rosemary's Baby (1968). An evil cult is depicted as active in a modern city, hiding in plain sight. And a couple of limousine liberal friends of the Jamisons are revealed to be cultists in their own right.
For Muir, the highlight of the film involves the depiction of a voodoo-like curse. Jessica Halliday (Helen Shaver) accidentally leaves her compact in a bathroom while snooping around in Calder's office. By the time she retrieves it, it has become a cursed item. While using it, something "gets under her beautiful skin". It manifests as a boil, which gets progressively redder and more inflamed. Finally it swells to capacity, and spiders start emerging from the boil's interior.
