It’s hard to explain why or how I just stumbled across a 15 year old Roger Ebert movie review, so I won’t. I will try to explain why I found the review so real.
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I actually saw this movie, and it’s really every bit as bad as the review suggests.
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Ebert questions how movies stereotype baddies. Ebert doesn’t get too controversial, so this is as much as we’ll get out of him.
The IMBD plot outline goes like this: “A New York psychiatrist finds that a voodoo cult, which believes in child sacrifice, has a keen interest in his own son.”
And Ebert says this:
“One thing you gotta say about Caribbean native religions: They don’t inspire stories that could star Loretta Young. Most religious movies are about peace and love and friendship, and how one day all of humanity is going to hold hands and be brother and sister. Movies about Caribbean native religions are always about guys with blank eyes who stare at you for 10 seconds and you’re volunteering to wring the chickens’ necks yourself.”
“…Every voodoo movie ever made has depicted bloodthirsty cults of savagely sadistic murderers, vengefully thirsting for innocent blood. There has been a lot in the papers recently about “Arab-bashing,” the practice of creating strongly negative stereotypes of Arabs on TV and in the movies. I’m in agreement. But what about voodoo-bashing? Isn’t it just as prejudicial?”
“…The movie is so hopelessly bankrupt of new ideas that it even ends with the obligatory shot suggesting that the evil will continue. “The Believers” has been phoned in from the repository of weary movie ideas, and it should be ashamed of itself.”