By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The Satanic Panic saga is making its Canadian premiere this week.
SATAN WANTS YOU, a documentary by Vancouver directors Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor, had its world premiere earlier this year at SXSW and will see its Canadian debut at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival tomorrow, April 27, with a follow-up screening Friday, May 5. For more info on those showings, click here. The movie will also play the Calgary Underground Film Festival this Friday, April 28; go here for more info on that.
The synopsis: “SATAN WANTS YOU tells the untold story of how the Satanic Panic of the 1980s was ignited by MICHELLE REMEMBERS, a lurid memoir by psychiatrist Larry Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith. Supported by the Catholic Church, the best-selling book relied on recovered-memory therapy to uncover Michelle’s childhood abduction by baby-stealing Satanists. Amplified by law enforcement and America’s daytime TV boom, satanic rumors spread through panic-stricken communities across the world, leaving a wave of destruction and wrongful convictions in their wake. This film digs deep into the roots of moral panics and cult conspiracies, showing how these events still affect and distort our reality today.”
