Satanic kind of pissed me off. More than most bad movies I see. Not because I was upset with the portrayal of Satanism or anything. Which I know nothing about, to be honest. Watching a lot of horror movies and listening to metal doesn't amount to much in that department. (Although I bet the characters in Satanic would tell you otherwise.) But Satanic commits two unforgivable sins: (1) it treats you like an idiot, and (2) it creates tremendously annoying characters, and then doesn't give you the satisfaction of watching them die. Boo on you, movie.
My Synopsis: Three annoying friends (and one less annoying Final Girl) are on their way to Coachella. Two of them are goth-lite and decide to take the group on a little Satanic side trip in LA while they are on the way. They want to check out the church of Satan, see the Tate murder house... they even stay in a hotel where a famous Devil worshipper committed suicide! But they get a little too curious about one of the local cults they encounter, and bite off a little more than they can chew. And bad things happen.
Overall: Not good. Okay from a technical standpoint, but just a boring and poorly executed story with bad characters.
Much like Funhouse, Satanic peaks very early. The highlight here is the pre-credit sequence, as we are treated to some vintage documentary footage of Anton LaVey and some old-timey representations of Old Scratch in the cinema. It's brief, but there's something interesting about the juxtaposition between the quaintness of the black and white footage and the evilness of the Devil. But once we jump into the van and meet our characters... oof.
I'll give Satanic some credit - at least they aren't the type of friends who hang out solely because they're in a movie. There's some family ties here - Final Girl Chloe and her frattish BF David are driving to Coachella, and Chloe's faux-goth cousin Elise and her BF Seth are along for the ride. I think the banter between David and Seth is supposed to be witty, but the two just bitch at each other the whole time. It'd be uncomfortable (at best) if you cared about them. As it is, it's just grating. But Elise is the one who has all of these ideas about making a detour into Satan-town, and wants to hit all of the Evil sites. Chloe and David aren't really into it, but we don't have a movie unless they acquiesce, so here we are, looking for Satanic hotspots in LA. Which goes about as well as you would expect, considering it's a horror movie and all.
And all of them, except for Chloe, are just obnoxious. In some cases, I'm willing to put up with aggravating characters, because I know at some point I'll get to watch them die. But not here! I wasn't taking notes, but I'm pretty sure everyone in Satanic makes it to the last ten minutes, and when some of them do die, you don't even get to see it. I guess the flipside is that you get to see them suffer through some mental anguish since they have an ominous feeling that *something* is going to happen, but it's not worth it. Just cut to the damn chase, Satanic. It's not good when you are actively cheering for Satanists - or even Satan Himself - but that's how the cookie crumbles here.
The gore/kills are almost exclusively offscreen, to the point where you start to wonder if there is some sort of fake-out device in play - like the whole story is all a prank or in a character's head. But you see the aftermath every once in a while, which is usually something horrifying, like a BURNED SHOE! Or a BURNED PHONE! They do eventually get to a little actual gore effects/body horror, the most notable looking like something from a later Nightmare on Elm Street film, but worse. I'll give the final scene some credit at least - it has the potential to be chilling, if only you hadn't given up on the film about a half-hour prior.
Oh, and it does have some notably terrible blood in the water effects. The gang (who is cursed by this point) are staying at David's cousin's house, and a demon comes (I guess) and destroys all the stuff in it. And also tosses a bunch of dead crows in the swimming pool. I don't know why they felt the need to bloody it up - it looks *terrible.* A bunch of dead crows in a pool would be scary enough. Plus, it was funny to me how David didn't even leave a note or shoot a text to his cousin: Sorry your house got fucked up by a demon, LOL.
But the worst thing about Satanic is how dumb it thinks you are. There are some numeric things going on with the "haunting" or whatever it is - five points to the pentagram, and five victims. They aren't afraid to show you that, again and again and again. Lest you forget that there are, in fact five of them. And there's five points on a pentagram! (There's one character I'm not telling you about, because *spoilers* for something I don't think you should watch.) Because there's five characters, you see, which lines up with the number of points on a pentagram. And the last act gets pretty well neutered - there's a big pseudo-twist that is easy to see coming to anyone who was paying attention during the first 10 minutes of the film.
So yeah, Satanic is bad news. Not a good way for me to wrap up the month.
I would not, at all, recommend this film.
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