Movies
‘Satan Wants You’ SXSW Review – Compelling Documentary Chronicles Destructive Roots of Satanic Panic
The early ’80s Satanic Panic phenomenon frequently spills over into horror thanks to the wave’s systematic targeting of the genre and heavy metal. Recent horror comedies or even the latest “Stranger Things” season highlight the absurdity of moral panic mania founded in baseless claims of Satanic ritual abuse. Documentary Satan Wants You chronicles one of the prominent causes of Satanic Panic, resulting in a compelling mystery unsettling for its overarching reach.
The 1980 novel Michelle Remembers is attributed as a harbinger of Satanic Panic. Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his long-term patient and eventual wife Michelle Smith coauthored the book, detailing therapy sessions that uncovered repressed memories of lurid Satanic rituals and abuse Smith endured. The book became a bestseller, bolstered by daytime TV, and spread the idea that Satanists could be everywhere (including your neighborhood) like wildfire and doused gasoline on moral panic.
Directors Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams meticulously deconstruct the sordid saga of Smith and Pazder. First, by establishing Smith and Pazder’s backgrounds, then through chilling audio recordings of the therapy sessions, where a hypnotized Smith eerily recounts nightmares and traumatic memories of torture and murder. Talking heads toggle between experts, authorities, and Smith and Pazder’s family members. It’s the latter that offers the most insight into the enigmatic nature behind Smith and Pazder’s relationship from origins to Michelle Remembers’ debunking.
Satan Wants You incorporates actual footage from the Satanic Panic era to illustrate the book’s wide-reaching impact. Clips of daytime talk shows, interviews, and additional news footage demonstrate how Smith and Pazder’s peculiar connection benefitted them while wreaking havoc upon society at large, let alone those in their immediate orbit. The way Horlor and Adams connect Margaret Kelly Michaels and the Wee Care Nursery School school abuse trial in 1987 effectively underscores the insidious and enduring consequences of Satanic Panic.
It’s Horlor and Adams’ simultaneous micro and macro overview of Pazder and Smith that impresses the most. The way they present a portrait of their subjects on an intimate level through familial accounts while providing a bird’s eye view of the book’s fallout underscores how history’s worst moments often germinate from tiny, seemingly benign origins. Bizarre therapy sessions between a therapist and his depressed patient didn’t just snowball into a sordid, ill-advised relationship; it created a global witch hunt founded in false truths and discredited practices.
How Horlor and Adam tie together all the various threads make for a compelling watch. The way the filmmakers present the story behind Michelle Remembers is filled with salacious details, personal accounts, and shocking collateral damage that keeps you deeply engaged, even if it takes a brief introductory period to acclimate with all of the information it tosses out at once. Occasional supporting cases leave you longing for a follow up, too. By the documentary’s end, Horlor and Adam more than succeed in presenting a startling reality, both past and present. Satan Wants You doesn’t just unveil disturbing truths behind a bygone era; it’s a cautionary tale for our current age of rampant misinformation.
Satan Wants You made its world premiere at SXSW.
Ghostface is back on the big screen this weekend… well, sort of… with the release of Scary Movie, which marks the Wayans brothers’ return to the horror spoof franchise for the first time since Scary Movie 2 back in the day. It’s likely to be the talk of the horror community for the weekend, but don’t overlook the other six genre movies that were freshly unleashed today.
Here’s all the new horror that released on Friday, June 5, 2026.
The horror spoof franchise is back with Scary Movie now playing in theaters!
Marlon Wayans (“Shorty”), Shawn Wayans (“Ray”), Anna Faris (“Cindy”), and Regina Hall (“Brenda”) reunite for the new Scary Movie, with the cast also including Dave Sheridan, Lochlyn Munro, Cheri Oteri, Chris Elliott, Jon Abrahams, Damon Wayans Jr., Gregg Wayans, Kim Wayans, Benny Zielke, Cameron Scott Roberts, Heidi Gardner, Olivia Rose Keegan, Ruby Snowber, Savannah Lee Nassif, Sydney Park, and Felissa Rose.
Twenty-six years after outrunning a suspiciously familiar masked killer (“Ghostface”), the Core Four are back in the killer’s crosshairs and no horror movie IP is safe…
Scary Movie will slash through reboots, remakes, requels, prequels, sequels, spin-offs, elevated horror, origin stories, anything with the word legacy in it, and every “final chapter” that absolutely isn’t. A whole lot has changed in the horror genre since the Wayans Brothers were in charge of the franchise; their involvement ended with Scary Movie 2 back in 2001!
Michael Tiddes (A Haunted House) directs Scary Movie 6 from a script written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, original Scary Movie director Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans (Scary Movie 2), and Rick Alvarez (A Haunted House).
From IFC, shark attack movie Chum is now available on Digital.
Alice Eve (Haunting of Queen Mary) stars in shark attack movie alongside Eric Michael Cole, Jim Klock, Elle Haymond, Lisa Yaro, Johnny Gaffney, and Sarah Siadat.
This one sounds very similar to last year’s Dangerous Animals…
Here’s the plot: “A newlywed couple joins friends on a Mediterranean yacht excursion, only to find themselves caught between a predatory shark and a psychopathic killer in their midst-transforming a sun-drenched escape into a fight for survival.”
Jonathan Zuck directs Chum, from a script by Jonathan Zuck and Joe Leone.
Samara Weaving (Ready or Not 2: Here I Come) and Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling) come together in Carolina Caroline, a sexy crime thriller now playing in theaters.
It’s not a horror movie, mind you, but it’s worth a mention here all the same.
Kyra Sedgwick (Family Movie) and Jon Gries also star in the romantic crime thriller.
Director Adam Carter Rehmeier’s film stars Samara Weaving as Caroline Daniels, whose desire to leave her small Texas town brings her into the orbit of a charismatic con man (Kyle Gallner), and together they weave a path of crime and passion across the American Southeast.
Adam Rehmeier previously directed the films Dinner in America and Snack Shack.
Tom Dean wrote the screenplay for Carolina Caroline.
Similar to Steven Spielberg’s upcoming big screen blockbuster Disclosure Day, Signal One explores humankind’s enduring question: what if we aren’t alone in the universe?
The sci-fi thriller is now available on Digital.
Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan), Josh Hutcherson (Five Nights at Freddy’s), David Thewlis (Harry Potter), Raoul Bhaneja (Possessor), Emma Ho (“The Expanse”), and Dennis Quaid (The Substance) star in Signal One from director Jonathan Sobol (The Art of the Steal).
When tech billionaire Sam Houston (Quaid) hires the brilliant computer scientist Annika (Fuhrman), she ventures to an isolated facility run by the brilliant, nihilistic creator of LITTLEMOUTH, a machine which can communicate with alien intelligence.
Annika soon learns some humanity-altering facts: that we are not alone in the universe, that alien intelligences are communicating around us at every moment, and that we are likely too primitive to even remotely understand what they are trying to tell us.
When the goal of the endeavor shifts from listening to talking back, the project rapidly devolves into chaos. With contact comes consequences, and soon Annika and the team must work to ensure the very survival of our species.
A schoolyard dare becomes an urban legend in the creepypasta-inspired horror anthology The Summoning. The indie film is now available on Digital from Brainstorm Media.
“A babysitting gig becomes a nightmare of urban legend when three teens summon Baby Blue. Survival depends on uncovering the past to escape a mother’s wrath from beyond the grave.”
Felipe Vargas (Rosario, Hive), Sergio Gonzalez, Brandon Piskorik, Corey Benson Powers, and Brian Sepanzyk direct the segments. Valeria San Martín, Justina Ceballos, Daniela Flombaum, Nannu Spannauss, Agustín Olcese, and Giovanni Onetti star.
The Summoning is written by Camilo Zaffora.
Happy Death Day actress Jessica Rothe stars as a mom struggling to keep her grip on her sanity and memory in the mind-bending Affection, now available on Digital at home.
In Affection, “Afflicted by a mysterious condition that resets her memory, Ellie becomes trapped in a cyclical nightmare with a man who claims to be her husband. She soon must uncover the horrifying truth of her existence—before she forgets it all again.“
Joseph Cross (“Big Little Lies”) and Julianna Layne (“Chicago P.D.”) also star in the sci-fi horror thriller. Affection marks the feature debut by writer/director BT Meza.
Daniel Kurland wrote in his review out of the film’s premiere, “Affection is steeped in existential questions and fears that plague modern society, while it embraces the ethos of the ’80s through bold body horror. Add to that Rothe’s revelatory performance, and Affection is a hidden gem that will connect with your mind, body, and soul.”
Lucile Hadžihalilović’s latest dark fairy tale, The Ice Tower, loosely reimagines Hans Christian Andersen’s fable “The Snow Queen,” and it’s now streaming on Shudder.
In the ’70s set film, “Jeanne, a 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot of a film adaptation of the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and she becomes fascinated by its star Cristina (Marion Cotillard), an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.“
Clara Pacini stars as Jeanne. August Diehl and Marine Gesbert also star in The Ice Tower, and look for a cameo from director Gaspar Noé (Climax, Irréversible).
“For me, The Ice Tower solidified Lucile Hadžihalilović’s place amongst the most fascinating creators of fairy tales today,” said distributor Yellow Veil Pictures co-founder Joe Yanick.
You must be logged in to post a comment.