In November of 1980 a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Lawrence Pazder from Victoria, British Columbia, wrote and published “Michelle Remembers” – an allegedly factual account of the childhood abuse of his patient, Michelle Smith, by a Satanic cult. Co-written by Smith herself, the book graphically describes how Michelle was abducted and imprisoned by a devil-worshipping sect before being forced to bear witness to all manner of obscene and unholy acts, including ritual sacrifice, child murder and even cannibalism. Upon release the book shocked the general public and the media alike, making headlines across not only Canada but the United States too, and eventually helping to spawn a wave of frenzied, reactionary fear across the globe that we now know as the “Satanic Panic”.
It’s no surprise that “Michelle Remembers” disturbed readers – the acts and rites described within its pages seem so ridiculously horrible that you’d begin to doubt that Lawrence and Michelle’s claims were true. You would be right to doubt as it turns out, “Michelle Remembers” may not have been the “true story” that its cover claimed it to be …
Directed by Canadian documentary filmmakers Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor, Satan Wants You uses a combination of archive footage and new interviews to tell the story of the birth of the Satanic Panic in late ‘70s Victoria. Largely composed of testimonies from Pazder and Smith’s relatives, we’re given an interesting and insightful look into how a supposed harrowing non-fiction account of “Satanic ritual abuse” that resulted in a widespread campaign of scaremongering, misinformation and hatred that ran for decades, held a whole history of secrets, lies, and deeply questionable psychiatric practices between its covers. Submitted to, and selected for, a whole host of major horror festivals across the world, including Soho Horror Fest, you might expect Satan Wants You to primarily be a study into how fear and panic can spread from the sharing of misinformation – all too relevant in our modern era of “Fake News”. That’s an important element of the documentary, but primarily this film’s story is a depiction of how conspiracy theories and religious grifting can tear apart families and ruin lives. We get to see the ripples, sure, but the focus is largely on the spot where the stone broke the water and sunk to the bottom.
… leaves the viewer with a desire to combat the spread of misinformation and the fear that it can cause.
Beyond its historical value, Satan Wants You also acts as a warning, with clips of Alex Jones and mentions of terms such as “Pizzagate” and “QAnon” serving to remind viewers that the season of reactionary hysteria isn’t over, and the spirit of the Satanic Panic still walks amongst us. One of the documentary’s best qualities is the way in which it exposes how the dog-whistles and “think of the children” terminology of ’80s right-wing fearmongering has evolved and survived in our present day, and the ways in which we, as a society, should be wary of how they’re used to hurt innocent people. It’s hard not to think of the current “groomer” panic surrounding Drag Queen Storytime and LGBTQ+ education in schools when hearing about the case of a schoolteacher who was falsely imprisoned for 5 years due to allegations of Satanic sexual abuse – the words used might not be quite the same, but the tactics certainly are.
Satan Wants You isn’t the definitive documentary on the Satanic Panic, though it does provide good coverage of the book at its core. Some of it feels rather slight and prone to straying from its focus, and the limited amount of stylised re-enactment footage becomes slightly repetitive as the film goes on. It also doesn’t particularly get under the skin of how and why mass reactionary panics like the Satanic Panic start – in spite of being a documentary on the origins of said cultural movement. The film occasionally shows an unusual bias in the way it spends far more time criticising Michelle and her attraction to Dr. Pazder than it does attacking the ways in which Lawrence manipulated her and her vulnerabilities using “recovered-memory therapy” (essentially hypnotism), and his power and authority as her psychiatrist. It’s undeniable that both are complicit in the damage done by “Michelle Remembers” no matter how you cut it, but there are moments where I feel as though the film lets him off a little too easy when compared to his patient and eventual wife.
Overall, Satan Wants You is a decent and pleasantly informative piece on the origins of a dark period of modern history that has unfortunately reared its ugly head once again during the past decade. It may not provide answers to its biggest questions, and the film is occasionally conflicted when it comes to choosing how large its scope of coverage should be, but it manages to remain deeply watchable and leaves the viewer with a desire to combat the spread of misinformation and the fear that it can cause. That, in itself, proves Satan Wants You to be a success.
Satan Wants You played a Special Preview at Soho Horror Fest 2023
