Every once in a while genre cinema steps back from “more, more, gore, gore” and takes a moment to address more philosophical questions. Generally these weighty issues are tackled in a small screen format—as evidenced by the socio-political subtexts of several episodes of Showtime’s Masters of Horror. Director Daniel Myrick’s BELIEVERS is one of those films. Noted as a “Teleplay” it seems the film was destined to a boob tube existence but never made it there. It’s certainly missing key elements to make a splash on mainstream movie houses, but it is compelling enough to have warranted a festival run or two—a fact cemented by the Best Picture honors it received at Minnesota’s Solstice Film Festival in 2007. For audiences that missed the only documented screening I could locate, the film makes its way to DVD courtesy of Warner Brother’s Raw Feed line—the same banner that saw the releases of REST STOP and SUBLIME and brainchild of the filmmakers behind those productions—Myrick, John Shiban and Tony Krantz.

BELIEVERS poses an artistic questions that is not un-familiar—what if? What if that crazy guy on the corner who claims to be Jesus Christ really is? What if Jim Jones and David Koresh were right on the money? What if the 38 members of Heaven’s Gate actually did hop aboard that spaceship in 1997 and ride it off to glory. BELIEVERS clearly takes the influence of the Heaven’s Gate cult and runs with it—runs full speed toward a Twilight Zone ending that only the most blinded genre fan couldn’t see coming. But like the men and women in this film, the goal here is the journey.

Dave (Johnny Messner) and Vic (Jon Huertas) are two paramedics who are sent to a remote area of Southern California to respond to an emergency call placed by a little girl. When they arrive, the pair discover the little girl’s mother dying on the side of the dusty road. Just as they jump into action the arrival of a truckload of rifle toting cultists kidnap the paramedics, the child and the dead mother and take them to their underground compound where they await the end of the world. Daniel Benzali (Jericho) portrays the all-knowing “Teacher”. He is the one who has discovered the mathematical formula that decodes the doomsday date. The Quanta Group is the Teacher’s collective—a communal of top minds that intend to leave earth behind, before the impending cleansing, and carry the seeds of the human race light years away. Dave and Vic are held captive as to not interfere with these final precious hours. With time rapidly running out, the pair are faced with not only the physical and immediate threats of their capture and impending doom, they are consumed with spiritual and moral quandaries as well.

Daniel Myrick mastered the art of leaving it all to the imagination as half of the Writing and Directing force behind THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. With BELIEVERS, he takes that same Spartan formula from the vastness of the Maryland forest to the dank and decrepit hallways of an abandoned military installation. Like BLAIR WITCH, BELIEVERS is beholden to its “talky” nature—the film has little to no action, an expanse of mythology. Where BELIEVERS differentiates itself from BLAIR WITCH completely is that the ending here is hardly meant to be obtuse. It’s the antithesis of BLAIR WITCH answering the film’s philosophical and spiritual question with unwavering clarity. That the answer is so obvious isn’t a downfall here. It’s a reaffirmation that what you suspected to be true is in fact so. The films not really about whether or not the Quanta Group is correct. The film is about the struggle two diametrically opposite protagonists face under extreme circumstances.

Vic is a devout Catholic struggling to come to terms with his own disintegrating faith and the ultimate acceptance of fate. Dave is an atheist who sees only madness and blind devotion to insanity. Even as Dave bears witness to events he cannot entirely define, he dismisses everything, focusing only on the absolute truth of his own worldview. As Dave and Vic, Johnny Messner and Jon Huertas each provide an exacting level of believability to their characterizations. Daniel Benzali’s performance as “The Teacher” a is perfect blend of serene superiority and psychotic devotion. He is saddled with the task of eliciting both fear and love and as the cult’s masthead and leader; he does both with a vicious tranquility.

BELIEVERS might not be the best “message movie” out there—although that subset of genre cinema has seriously been crippled over the past two decades—it does deliver more than it’s simple set up promises. Most of this is in part to the performance from the trio of leads. Myrick’s direction is as bare as the films sets and the whole production definitely has a movie-of-the-week quality. It’s over-long and might have benefited from about 10-minutes of trims or the loss of the “search party” subplot. Frankly it seems that the film only left the compound to break up the monotony of setting an entire production underground. Still, even with these minor quirks, audiences that aren’t looking for a flashy film—and understanding Myrick’s background on THE BLAIR WITCH, they shouldn’t be—are apt for a pleasant surprise with BELIEVERS. It certainly shows that the filmmaker behind it is capable of making a very different, yet equally thought provoking and intimate film without totally abandoning the ethos behind his biggest success.