Sep 5

Sep 5 Moral Panic, Fundamentalism, & We Summon the Darkness

Meg Sipos & Eric Botts

Satanic Panic

BEWARE SPOILERS

We go into every post assuming you’ve already watched the films being discussed.

We Summon the Darkness is available on Netflix as of this writing (9/4/2021).

Eric’s written on this blog before about having been an angry kid, in part, because bullies at school had spread rumors that he was a Satanist--pointing to his hair as evidence, because it had spikes and was, therefore, “Satanic.” He grew up in a suburb of Erie, Pennsylvania, where a good quarter of the kids he knew were in Christian youth groups led by old men who showed movies and gave lectures to explain, using an absurd blend of theology and grossly misrepresented scientific theories, that evolution is a myth, that life begins at conception, and that homosexuality is a sin.

Among the hodgepodge theories “disproving” evolution was the second law of thermodynamics, which states something completely irrelevant because how energy moves in an isolated system has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. The youth group kids told Eric he’d go to hell if he didn’t dress differently, go to church, and stop listening to devil music. Also, they wanted him to please come to their Christian punk band’s show at the youth group center. (Seriously. They sang “Our God Is an Awesome God.”) Either that, or they would just assault him in the halls of his high school.

It wasn’t just the youth group kids. Other kids at school, their parents, teachers, even his high school principal got in on the God-fearing bully act. At the time, Eric figured this was just the world, or at least, just the United States: a place where you were free to practice any religion, as long as it was Christianity. One nation under one Christian God.

But moral panics about innocent people being secret Satanists aren’t new, they aren’t isolated within the suburbs of dying cities, and they aren’t peculiar to the United States. Fear thy neighbor accusations of innocent people casting hexes, communing with Satan, and engaging in pedophilia and ritualistic sacrifice go back at least as far as medieval witch trials and the Crusades. Back then, you could be hunted down, tortured, and interrogated until you confessed to whatever cockamamy garbage you were accused of. Then you’d either be released because you accused ten other people of similar cockamamery or killed because you didn’t.

All this for being a woman disliked by other pious women, for having a disability that caused you to move or talk or act differently, for going against Church doctrine, or for going against the Church’s political interests.

(We got slightly into this earlier this year with one of our very first posts, on the 1922 Danish-Swedish film Häxan.)

Today, we’re kicking off a new series of Dissections on horror movies about Satanism and Satanic panics, starting with Marc Meyers’ unfairly maligned 2019 film We Summon the Darkness.

But before we get to that, some context:

Battle of Ascalon engraving depicting a battle in the First Crusade. Photo via Good Free Photos.

Panic & Persecution

Fundamentalist religious groups among nearly all of the world’s major religions have long histories of fearmongering, spreading false accusations of evil behavior, and wrongful (often knowingly wrongful) persecution. In the case of Christianity, this has meant disseminating rumors of evil sabbaths. In punishment, the Church would manifest God’s wrath in whatever torture or ostracism or imprisonment they deemed appropriate, as jury, judge, and persecutor.

All that is to say, this “violence for the sake of our God” mindset isn’t new. In fact, these are constant, recycled narratives that rear their ugly heads in different ways depending on time, place, and whatever pious madness has wormed its way into society’s collective brain.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, parents accused preschool workers, without evidence, of abusing their children. Following these accusations, police would pressure therapists to interview all the kids about the supposed abuse they suffered. When the kids gave mundane, innocuous accounts indicating no wrongdoing, the interviewers would push them to describe more and more absurd events with leading questions until they finally got the salacious Satanic cult narrative they wanted. Such false but grand accounts were replete, according to the New York Times, with vast underground networks of tunnels leading to sacrificial chambers.

Some of those cases fizzled out due to lack of evidence. Others resulted, despite also lacking evidence, in the loss of life and in the imprisonment of dozens of innocent people.

By the 1990s, the Satanic panic that consumed the media and created mass insanity in the ‘70s and ‘80s is generally thought to have tapered off. But, as Aja Romano points out in an article for Vox called “Satanic Panic’s Long History,” mass delusion and belief in evil Satanists never actually ended. We’re still in a state of perpetual social panic over evil cabals and secret societies of pedophiles.

But we’ve grown past the need for overt religious reasoning and have moved on to politics. Now we have QAnon and Alex Jones and other serpents infesting our communities with on-their-face absurd conspiracy theories about democrats trafficking children into the nonexistent basements of pizza shops for a nonexistent global pedophilic sex ring.

There’s a rich film tradition drawing on and indulging this history of madness: Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), The Believers (1987), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and The Babysitter (2017), just to name a few. In recent years, though, our Satanic cult movies have begun to move away from the devil-worshippers of Rosemary’s Baby and Eyes Wide Shut to critiques of capitalism and rich privilege.

Take Kill List (2012), where the Pagans performing ritualistic abuse and murder are basically evil capitalists in positions of corporate power sacrificing people to their money gods. Or look at Ready or Not (2019), in which a rich family maintains its wealth and success in the boardgame industry by occasionally murdering people who marry into the family.

Then there’s Satanic Panic (2019), where the folks in the rich part of town aren’t just notoriously bad tippers and classist assholes; they also worship the demon Baphomet, chanting things like, “Wealth to the strong! Death to the weak!” That movie argues that the protagonist’s neighbor, who identifies as a Satanist and a vegan, isn’t the one viewers should be afraid of. Rather, it’s these rich people who can’t bother to tip, who hoard privilege and power, and who quite literally kill to maintain that wealth and power.

And in We Summon the Darkness (2019), the Satanists we need to watch out for are actually a congregation of Christians following a televangelist who fancies himself “the wrath of God.” That man, Pastor John Henry Butler is, in our reading of the film, the physical embodiment of Satan on Earth. The fallen Lucifer, warped by pride and a lust for power.

Whether you take that embodiment literally--he really is Satan--or metaphorically, We Summon suggests that an evil force, under the pious guise of televangelism, has corrupted children into staging false-flag Satanic murder-suicides.

Maybe that’s an overly obvious point--given that we’re just pointing out the basic plot--but it’s something a lot of audiences seem to have missed. At least according to the reviews we’ve read.

Reviews Miss the Point

We Summon received decent, if mixed, reviews from critics (its tomatometer stands at 69% on Rotten Tomatoes), with the general consensus that the film “makes the most of its rather pedestrian plot with palpable affection for genre formula, an appealing cast, and a sharp sense of humor.”

Honestly, that’s a pretty fair assessment. Anyone who goes into We Summon expecting groundbreaking cinema, or anything more than a fun genre flick with a seemingly controversial premise, might be disappointed. Critics generally point out that it is a fun and well-crafted film despite its “pedestrian plot.” But We Summon also has a sense of wit, nuance, and allegory that gets lost in even the positive-leaning reviews.

General audiences, however, are harsh. As of this writing, its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a paltry 34%. Some user reviews criticize the lack of gore or “fun” kills. Others focus on the weak special effects. Still others just find it offensively generic. Or generically offensive.

Many of the negative comments boil down to misogynistic blah blah we don’t need to reiterate here. But there’s a subtext to many other negative comments that seems to be all about audience expectations. One reviewer brings that subtext to the forefront: “I wish I could have seen what I thought it was going to be: a bunch of satanists terrorizing a community and stalking a group of teenage kids.” In other words, lots of folks going in expecting Father Lankaster Merrin to rescue Regan MacNeil from Satan’s clutches; expecting Ed Warren to exorcise demonic forces from possessed people and buildings; expecting the devil to manipulate and seduce wayward Thomasin by turning her family against her. And to be fair, if you advertise that a horror movie is about an evil Satanic cult, then audiences are going to expect an evil Satanic cult.

But We Summon is smarter than most people, users or critics, give it credit for. Instead of standard tropes about demonic possession and Satanic cults, the film presents viewers with a caricatured reality, in which a Christian youth group for “wayward girls” murders heavy metal stoners and stages the scenes of those murders to look like Satanic rituals.

Caricatured reality? Yes.

Totally unrealistic and absurd, as many user reviews suggest? Well, compared to completely fabricated stories about devil cults that have absolutely no basis in verifiable fact, maybe not.

Let’s not forget the Spanish Inquisition. The Holy Crusades. The Salem Witch Trials. We could go on and on.

Johnny Knoxville as pious big bad John Henry Butler.

We Summon just takes historical realities of Christian fundamentalists falsely accusing and persecuting innocent people, modernizes them, and fictionalizes them with the character of televangelist Pastor John Henry Butler (Johnny Knoxville) as its pious big bad.

Daughters of the Dawn

The film opens on three young women--Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson), and Beverly (Amy Forsyth)--on a road trip to a heavy metal concert. It’s 1988, a peak media moment of Satanic panic in the States. They’re headed to the concert in search of victims--something that gets teased enough for viewers to figure out within the first twenty minutes. Then, right around thirty-five minutes in, they say outright that it’s their turn to stage a ritualistic murder-suicide for their congregation, the Daughters of the Dawn--recalling one of the names of Lucifer: the Morning Star.

They stage these Satanic sacrifices to spur panic among the general population and drive them to the protective arms of Pastor John Henry Butler. And they target counter cultures, like heavy metal fans, because “you dress the part, and you look the part, and then the news is gonna fill in the rest for us.”

The “holy work” of their wide-reaching congregation is a constant backdrop throughout the movie. We first hear of the “ritual murders” on the car radio. Then, when they stop for gas, Ding Dongs, and the first of many pee breaks for Val, the gas station television shows Pastor John Henry Butler asking for donations in militant religious language:

Join me in this fight; it is not too late. Your donations will incinerate these demons and send them back to the Hell from whence they came! Hallelujah!

Even when the girls reach the concert and begin their pre-show tailgating, the murders are a casual topic of conversation. We learn there have been eighteen deaths so far in this latest wave, the last three in Tallahassee, and if the girls succeed in their nightly mission of murder and mayhem, that count will rise to twenty-one.

And, though it’s been hinted at various points in the film, just before the climax, we finally get the explicit connection. As the mortally wounded Kovacs (Logan Miller) stumbles out of the house, he finds a car pulling into the driveway and a man making his way to the front door. Thinking he’s saved, Kovacs pleads for help, and the man convinces him to hand over the gun. As soon as he does, though, Kovacs finally recognizes him: “Hey, I know you. You’re that pastor.” Butler fires the gun into Kovacs’ gut, from which he slowly bleeds out. Butler then replies, “I’m the wrath of God.”

Pastor Satan

We said before that we suspect audiences balk at We Summon because its premise goes against expectations: that priests, pastors, ministers, reverends, and other representatives of Christianity will save (or try to save) people (and buildings) from Hellish forces; that movies about Satanic cults should have actual Satanic cults.

Alexis Butler after getting thrown out a window and just before getting hit by a car.

Thing is, this movie is about a Satanic cult, if you recognize that John Henry Butler is Lucifer, who, in some Christian traditions, was an archangel before he fell. His name, “Butler,” would suggest servant, but by every measure, he appears to act independent of God, committing mass murder and manipulating the innocent into evil deeds. He’s even ready to sacrifice his own daughter to further his agenda. From a Christian perspective, that’s the devil in a nutshell: a “servant” of God who rebelled and built an army to serve his own interests.

When Butler finds Alexis in her room after he shoots Kovacs and discovers the dead bodies of the sheriff and his own ex-wife, he chastises her because she’s failed in her duty as his daughter and as a Daughter of the Dawn. He expresses great disappointment and says she’s put everything he’s worked for in jeopardy. But he has a plan. As he moves in to strangle her, he promises to weave a narrative in which she died a martyr’s death. Though he fails to kill her, Alexis does eventually die, but rather than making her out to be a martyr, Butler portrays her to the media as having been taken in by the same fictitious Satanic cults he claims to fight. In short, like the Satan of Dante’s Inferno, Butler wields uncanny skill when it comes to rhetorical tricks and narrative manipulation.

So, all in all, we have a congregation of wayward girls following a man claiming to be the wrath of God and committing atrocities under the name “Daughters of the Dawn.” We’d say that sounds like a Satanic cult.

As for the other audience expectation--that representatives of Christianity should save us from Hellish forces--well, the historical fact of the matter is this: when religious fundamentalists claim to wage holy wars against Hellish forces, when they claim to enact God’s wrath on Earth, they’re generally throwing around false accusations and committing terrible atrocities.

It may go against Hollywood convention, and it may seem controversial, but the premise of We Summon is far more plausible and historically aware than the premises of even the best traditional Satanic cult movies.

The truth is, when it comes to Satanic and other moral panics, the supposed Satanists and global cabals and welfare queens and super predators aren’t the threat. They’re the ruse. The threat is the snake-tongued charlatan, the culture warrior, the cynical politician, the religious fundamentalist claiming to dole out the wrath of God. The supposed makers of peace who bring swords.