Satan Wants You

An interesting documentary, the only complaint I would make about it is that it puts too much of the blame for the Satanic Panic on Michelle and her Doctor, when there was a huge cultural underpinning to the craziness that happened in the late 80s and Early 90s.

It wasn't just this book, it was panics about heavy metal music, Dungeons and Dragons, and horror movies that created the illusion that there were a bunch of Satan Worshippers out there. Heck, Geraldo did a whole special on it, and the other Daytime Shows followed suit. (This is when Daytime shows still tried to do serious subjects and not just people fighting and taking paternity tests and fighting over the results of paternitiy tests.)

Still, the story of Michelle and her doctor is horrifying, regardless of if they were scammers or good intentioned people practicing bad psychaitry. But really, where were the people who knew better. Law enforcement went along with this nonsense for years and treated these hucksters like they were real experts.

If you know anything about the Satanic Panic there are numerous child abuse allegations including a daycare in the United States in the early 1980s. Satan Wants You is the overly specific probe into the life of a woman named Michelle from Canada who has been blamed along with her psychiatrist for creating Satanic Panic. The documentary is ambivalent as to if any of the details in the lurid, violent biography the psychiatrist wrote actually happened to Michelle (her sisters have no recollection of it) but the stories she told are pretty disgusting and jarring. So the damage was done, everyone from the Catholic church to police stations were on the look out for cults of devil worshippers.

The problem is that too much is made of Michelle's subsequent marriage to her doctor, and bitter resentments are repeated ad nauseum by his adult children and elderly first ex-wife. Nothing new was really revealed by this documentary, it's not that enlightening and it's certainly not comprehensive. No background or context is given for the counter culture of the Sixties or numerous Satanic-themed horror films from the Seventies - this isn't a documentary for academics or intellectuals, its basically a bunch of gossip about Michelle.

The brief and absurd shallow defense of Anton LeVey adds nothing to the film, as LeVey was a disturbed and abusive man and none of that is explained, either. The entire point seems to be an attempt to convince people that the Church of Satan is harmless which isn't quite the whole story. Everyone wants things to be black and white, nice and clean, and that's not real life. While the shadowy horror movie ideas about Satanic cults were greatly exaggerated or even fabricated, people involved with LeVeyan Satanism aren't exactly a bunch of innocent scholars. To the contrary, LeVey himself was a low-life and a perfect example of the banality of realistic evil.

I got around 20% into it before realizing I wouldn't be able to read ANYTHING that was written. Either the tiny red words bled into the dark background or excerpts that were shown on screen for 3/4 of a second. I assume I am to watch with the pause button on standby? How does this get past editors? My God.

Plus the storytelling. Nausea inducing time jumps. Are we talking about your dad, your mom, the shrink? And when? Who is talking and in what point of view? I'm intrigued enough to fight through it, but confused enough to leave a review.

I guess there is no standard. We are all filmmakers and writers now.

I remember visiting a relative a few years ago and coming across a forty year old book called MICHELLE REMEMBERS. It was marked non-fiction, but it had a Stephen King sort of fiction feel to it.

The story was hard to believe. The story was over the top and had no secondary sources to back up many of the claims made in the book. The book made several serious allegations, yet there were no police reports referred to in the book. The Wikipedia article pointed out several inconsistencies with the book.

Satan Wants You picks up from there and gives a play by play account of the book and the subsequent events that followed. The movie gave more evidence that the book was a hoax, such as playing some of the original audio tapes and interviews with others related to the case.

The film seems to place the blame on the two authors who un-intentionally caused a lot of harm to others, some who spent years in jail on false charges. While much of the blame does rest on those two, some also rests on the people who believed it too easily.

While the original Satanic Panic died down, the film points out several repercussions felt today in the form of things like Pizzagate and several alt-right conspiracy theories.

A great film overall.

Satan Wants You was well-received at its world premiere at SXSW Film Festival. Satan Wants You explores the story of how a book by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Lawrence Pazdur supposedly based on her recovered memories produced a worldwide panic about supposed Satanists torturing children. Much of this panic turned out to be utter nonsense that made millions for therapists and TV shows. The history of how this happened is absolutely fascinating. It appears as if it may have been initially well-intentioned, but the result destroyed many lives. It also shows how easy it is to manipulate human memory. It suggests the need for great skepticism about any recollection based on so-called recovered memories.

The film reconstructs the time and events through interviews with the participants and video from the period. It is an enjoyable and provocative historical examination. While the originally Satanic Panic finally died out, it has reappeared again in recent years in the more politicized version of the QAnon conspiracy. This film is recommended to those who are intrigued by history and the nature of human memory. It is truly a story of how the road to hell can be paved with good intentions.