Let’s talk about Satanic Panic. Another film that a lot of people didn’t understand — the usual passel of progressives and the like. It is, essentially, about the parasitism of the rich on the rest of society, the Boomer abandonment and disdain for their own children, and how the affluent both utterly depend on and despise the lower classes.

For instance, in one scene Rebecca Romijn (great as the villain Satanist cult leader) says to her daughter, “I gave you the greatest honor, and you spat in my face. Your generation doesn’t understand sacrifice.” This “greatest honor” she’s referring to is her daughter having her body torn apart crotch-first as she births the demon Baphomet. Remind you of any rich Boomers you know?

The protagonist gets involved in this mess when she delivers pizza to a rich person’s house and becomes enraged when he stiffs her out of a tip on the large order. A lot of reviewers seemed to see all of this as coincidental or grace notes — meanwhile, it’s all making some fairly obvious (to me, at least) social commentary.

The movie is full of great little moments like that, such as the demon-summoning coven being run like a self-help or MLM group with the cultists chanting lines like, “Are you ready to make an investment in your future?”

The best part is when Sam the protagonist recycles a cheap line some guy had thrown at her to manipulate her into doing something she didn’t want to do. She, however, puts the line into service into tricking a demon into letting her go.

Best lines from the movie: “You go to Mill Basin a delivery boy, but you come back a delivery man.”

And:

“We’re going to hide in here like scared little bitches because they can turn your liver into fire ants. If they find us, they’re not going to kill us. They’re gonna do shit that you can’t comprehend. And they’re not going to stop until you’re strapped naked to a barbed-wire altar with the 15-foot beast of Gehenna and his double-pronged demon dong walking out of your cooch chute like it’s a revolving door of ground beef.”

Also, it was directed by a woman, Chelsea Stardust, which I suspect made it a far better movie given the content and the subtext of the even greater sacrifices women are supposed to make to the patriarchy even at the top of the heap.

Recommended. It’s short, it’s fun, and it has a lot to say.