By Mo Moshaty

Being born in 19blah blah blah, I remember the scale of the Satanic Panic Mountain just beginning. My mother was obsessed with Phil Donohue, Sally Jesse Raphael and at one time, if you can believe it, an endearing Geraldo Rivera and Maury Povich doing actual journalism. Daytime talk shows were a way to finally open our world to the people that were living in it that weren’t down the street or at the corner store, your local church, mall or ladies’ auxiliary. It was life on a grand scale with all the fuss, muss and ‘weirdos’ it could muster. I learned what a Club Kid was, a pimp and ‘high-priced hooker’ was, a drag queen was and who Satanists were.

The last guests to drive my mother up the wall so far, she had to legit phone a friend. My mother, a staunch, fire and brimstone Spanish-Catholic was livid to say the least and spoke over the ENTIRE show which made me question, one, how she could be hard-disagreeing without ever hearing what they were saying and two, why she didn’t just switch it off. My mother, queen of the hate-watch. Steve J. Adams and Sean Horler, psychological autopsy that is ‘Satan Wants You’ took me back to that place, directly in front of the console television, with my mother seething in the background as I watched the moral panic permeate the entire country first-hand.

Pulling us back into the throes of the 1980s: the excess, the expansion of commerce, the technology, the exploration and the ever-fought quest for moral order. Satan Wants You explores the anxiety-ridden decade as it coasted it’s way to gross supplies of misinformation and the thirst for sensationalism. The Sallys and Phils soon gave way to the Jennys, the Oprahs, the Rickis and the Jerrys and everything in between and became beacons for the moral crusade against evil. It’s focal point is the book ‘Michelle Remembers’ a oft contested memoir written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder about the experiences of his patient, (and later his wife – stick a pin in this, we’ll come back to it) Michelle Smith – a book that sparked the Satanic Panic Movement.

We can only sit back and watch how this book changed the way we view the world, how media literally went down the garbage chute and how feeding into ‘proof’ like a starving animal gave birth to how we devour ‘breaking news’ these days. ‘Michelle Remembers‘ was an ‘autobiographical’ (see quotes) account of Smith’s abusive childhood at the hands of her parents and their fellow followers of the Church of Satan, she accounted being the subject and victim of many tortuous rituals involving violent psychological abuse and devil worship. Pazder, fascinated, of course ran with the story as ‘proof’ that these so-called-cults were actively seeking out and feeding off the weak and vulnerable.

We’re shown through first-hand recordings of Pazder and Michelle’s sessions, each one escalating to violent, bloody and heinous heights. It’s hard not to feel anguish and disbelief as you listen and it’s easy to see how the world was completely gripped by the story, hanging on her every word and comparing it to the rest of their lives – actively seeking out their own proof that the world was preying on them. But as you stay longer in this doc, you realize that these ‘accounts’ are more like suggestions from Pazder rather than Michelle’s actual upbringing and we’re shown how this belief and panic percolated into a national obsession. A modern ‘witch hunt’ ensues, with innocent people being accused of violent torture and devil worship with baseless grounds, leading to convictions and lives destroyed and leaving kids of my generation believing that boogeymen and women were walking among us.

Michelle later married Pazder, a marriage that was doomed to failure once the allure of sensationalism wore thin and Michelle’s obsession for the spotlight grew.

The documentary is chockful of incredible insight from all angles, multi-denominational religious leaders, members of the Church of Satan, psychiatrists, historians, child therapists, Theologians, and Satanic cult survivors, creating a rich overview of the intense moral panic and our new-born taste for conspiracy theories. It’s a glimpse into our gullibility, our easily-led manipulation sown from a small seed of an idea, quote, speculation and otherwise. Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder singlehandedly created a modern mass hysteria that never subsided.

Satan Wants You pulls viewers into a haunting, eerie world that mirrors the hysteria of the Satanic Panic, using dark reenactments and archival footage that make it feel like a psychological thriller. Layer by layer, it builds up a creepy atmosphere perfect for a story about mass delusion and lives turned upside down. But the film’s real impact comes from how relevant it still is; by exploring how misinformation fueled panic back then, it offers a timely warning for today’s conspiracy-fueled climate. Satan Wants You doesn’t just recount the past—it holds up a mirror to our present, urging us to think critically and resist the pull of collective paranoia and if our recent political state tells us anything, it’s that some of us take the bait, no questions asked.