SATRANIC PANIC movie poster | ©2024 Dark Star Pictures
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Cassie Hamilton, Zarif, Lisa Fanto, Chris Asimos, Toshiro Glenn, Sebastien Grech
Writers: Cassie Hamilton & Alice Maio Mackay & Ben Pahl Robinson
Director: Alice Maio Mackay
Distributor: Dark Star Pictures
Release Date: August 13, 2024 (digital and VOD)
There have certainly been plenty of influential transphobic horror movies in cinema history (PSYCHO and DRESSED TO KILL, anyone?). Young trans filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay (who has been making features since she was in her teens) does her part to even the score, thematically at least, with SATRANIC PANIC.
Directing from the script she co-wrote with Cassie Hamilton & Ben Pahl Robinson, Mackay starts us off in rural Australia, where trans nightclub performer Aria (Hamilton) is singing about what could either be dangerous love or demonic murders.
Once Aria gets offstage, we’re betting on the latter. Aria and her nonbinary best friend, comic book artist Jay (Zarif), are mourning the death of Jay’s boyfriend Max (Sebastien Grech). Aria and Jay witnessed but were unable to enact a rescue during Max’s kidnapping and murder by a masked group of what appeared to be Satanists.
But lately, Aria has been able to sense when a demon is inhabiting a human body (their demonic natures manifest both at will and when they are attacked). When a demon shows up in Aria’s dressing room, she manages to dispatch the fiend.
Aria and Jay resolve to find out who killed Max and slay all the demons. It’s not a huge spoiler to say that the main villain (Chris Asimos) is so vehemently anti-trans that his agenda propels the plot.
There is camp here, but maybe not as much as we might expect. Yes, BUFFY is name-checked and FRIDAY THE 13TH gets a nod, but the mood is more like, well, BUFFY than, say, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. The main characters in their downtime are regular folks with ambitions, relationships, and family issues; they’re not perpetually going big for an unseen audience.
Director Mackay likes to wash some scenes in Day-Glo colors, which provides a certain graphic novel look (and perhaps conceals budgetary limitations). The gore is plentiful, though there aren’t many real scares. The closest SATRANIC PANIC comes to this is a scene where Aria is bespelled and sits down with a table full of possessed people, who seem to offer friendship. It’s actually creepy.
Hamilton, who presumably contributed much to Aria in her collaboration on the script, has crafted a character who makes jokes and likes to drink and wants to be in love, but still has an infallible sense of right and wrong. She also gets to demonstrate strong singing chops, and composed two of Aria’s four musical numbers.
In the less showy role, Zarif demonstrates emotional openness. Asimos is fearless as the stunningly self-unaware bad guy. Lisa Fanto shows physical prowess and dramatic versatility as another demon slayer.
By the end, we get some major soap opera horror twists. SATRANIC PANIC piles on whatever it feels like it needs to in order to reach the climax it wants. It’s certainly agitprop, but there’s a palpable sense of joy and adventure here. If cis young women get to fantasize about being Buffy or Willow, and cis young men get to fantasize about being Peter Parker, trans young women ought to be able to fantasize about being someone like Aria.
Amid the color-washed scenes, the question may occur as to what the characters from I SAW THE TV GLOW would make of SATRANIC PANIC. When a movie gets you to wonder about these things, it means it’s hit home on some levels.
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