As one of the film’s commentators quips, “[The book] Michelle Remembers is patient zero of the satanic panic.” A religious movement that gripped the minds of millions in the 1980s, the satanic panic brought forth thousands of cases of emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse of individuals at the hands of satanic cults. Although many of these cases were seemingly hearsay and unconfirmed, the movement snowballed into a worldwide moral panic fueled by the media and questionable practices of some therapists at that time.

Satan Wants You is perfect for those who would like to follow a potentially real-life case akin to movies like Hereditary and Rosemary’s Baby, where a child is offered to a devilish cult by their family. Much of the documentary details Michelle’s reported experiences with the cult and the media campaign that her therapist, Dr. Lawrence Pazder, launched to stir the public to grow suspicious of the people they let around their children. The movie also closely examines the personal lives of Michelle and Lawrence, fleshing out the private and scandalous events that lead to the public notoriety that the two sought to gain.

While many documentaries about the satanic panic I have seen typically center around heavy metal music’s supposed influence on the movement, Satan Wants You tells the story of this time from a different perspective. It explores the irony of the campaign, where victims turned out to be the villains, having started a public outcry under false pretenses and ruining countless lives. The documentary set up the film’s flow by first recounting the well-known facts and notorious cases associated with the satanic movement but then exposing the absolute truth, told from the mouths of the people who knew Michelle and Lawrence best, their family and closest friends.

Written and directed by Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams, Satan Wants You was a compelling watch, structured in a way that felt like an eerie rollercoaster ride through the lives of the instigators of a worldwide panic. Satan Wants You is informative and wildly entertaining because of its subject and the content chosen for discussion in the movie. I enjoyed the issue, structure, and commentary in Satan Wants You. While the details shared in Michelle’s supposed stories are grim and uncomfortable, I thought the documentary itself was a breath of fresh air within Fantasia Film Festival’s horror-related movies.