Review by thalassafischer

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.