to the barn, Cal investigates the barn loft and finds an altar adorned with religious icons, fresh produce, loaves of bread, and various sacrificed animals. Hearing sounds from below he sees Jessica has come in. She confesses to making the shrine saying "I did it for us. We'll be safe now." Cal stares in shock as the screen fades to black. Cast Analysis Barna William Donovan notes that there were several Satanic-themed Hollywood films in the 1970s. Citing as examples The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen film series (1976-1991). But he also noted that Hollywood seemed to have lost interest in the subject by the 1980s. He cites The Believers as one of only two noteworthy films about Devil worship created in the 1980s, the other one being Angel Heart (1987). Though he notes that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) also touched on the similar subject of a demon-worshiping cult, which abducts children and offers human sacrifices. He points out that 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", while The Believers was set in that contemporary world. The villains were not, however, worshipers of the Judeo-Christian Satan. Instead they were practitioners of Santería, the legitimate Afro-Caribbean religion depicted in the film as "a cult of evil that condones human sacrifice". Neither film approached the subject of the 1980s hysteria over Satanic ritual abuse, a conspiracy theory which generated sensationalist headlines in this decade. 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. Muir points similarities to The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972), as both films fear ethnicity. For example, in The Believers, 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. Roger