Review: We Summon the Darkness (2019)

 We Summon the Darkness (2019)

Rated R for bloody violence, pervasive language, some drug use and sexual references

Score: 3 out of 5

Belief in Satanic ritual abuse, the idea that underground devil-worshiping cults are sacrificing people, especially children, to the devil and are in league with the authorities to cover it up, is one of the most pervasive, and annoying, conspiracy theories of our time. Peaking in popularity in the '80s during what was known as the "Satanic Panic", the theory saw countless lives destroyed as innocent people were accused of murder, rape, pedophilia, cannibalism, and other unspeakable crimes. In more recent years, it has come back with a vengeance in the form of QAnon, a social-media-driven conspiracy theory that adds an undercurrent of political extremism to the equation, the accused in this case being anybody who the far-right fever swamp doesn't like. All this, in spite of the fact that the only evidence ever offered came in the form of a handful of "tell-all" books by authors whose credibility on the matter turned out to be shot through with holes, the details drawn less from actual Satanic groups like the Church of Satan or the Temple of Set and more from the gothic religious horror films of the 1960s and '70s like Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. Regardless, the idea is freaky, and there's a reason why it's been a staple of both horror movies and church pamphlets for decades.

I bring up this history because We Summon the Darkness, while advertising itself as exactly this kind of Satanic horror movie, is in fact rooted in what Satanic ritual abuse really was: a moral panic driven by pastors with an agenda, unscrupulous psychiatrists, paranoid law enforcement, credulous reporters, and others who wanted to believe it was real. I kind of have to spoil to the twist in this movie (so, consider yourself warned), but since it comes at the end of the first act, knowing it going in (as I vaguely did) won't really affect your enjoyment of the hour that follows, especially not when the film is anchored by a pair of outrageously over-the-top and enormously entertaining villains combined with a streak of dark humor a mile wide. It's a thrilling and stylish, if fairly predictable, satire of fundamentalist religion gone awry that moves quickly, sends you for a loop, and ends on a nice, dark note.

Set in Indiana in 1988, the film follows Alexis, Val, and Beverly, three attractive young women with a fondness for leather and denim who are on their way to a metal concert in some podunk town. There, they encounter three metalheads, Mark, Ivan, and Kovacs, who carelessly threw a milkshake out their window and onto the windshield of Alexis' Jeep while passing them earlier. The girls don't hold it against them, however, and instead invite them to Alexis' big, fancy house (someone's rebelling against her rich parents) for a night of beer, drugs, and lovemaking... or so these guys think. Because, as we learn from news reports and the sermons of the televangelist John Henry Butler, there has been a series of Satanic murders happening all across the country lately, one that Alexis and her friends seem keenly interested in. And Mark, Ivan, and Kovacs are about to learn the truth about the Satanists lurking throughout our society... namely, that it's all a scam, because Alexis, Val, and Beverly are in fact born-again Christians who are part of Butler's congregation, staging a "Satanic" killing spree in order to scare a godless country back into church.

Yup, it's Christians vs. Satanists, and the Christians are the bad guys. Keean Johnson, Logan Miller, and Austin Swift were all good as the beleaguered horror movie survivors trapped in Alexis' house, as was Amy Forsyth as Beverly, the one amongst the evil trio who's having doubts about the whole thing (after a certain point, it's easy to figure out where her arc goes), but if this movie belonged to anyone, it would be Alexandra Daddario and Maddie Hasson as Alexis and Val. The two of them are loud, campy, sexy, and by far the main source of this film's pleasures, playing their femmes fatales as Harley Quinn with a Bible in one hand and a can of Pabst in the other. They are careless and screw up a lot, so high off of their own righteousness that they make grievous mistakes, and it's later implied that the law was already starting to close in on them for such. Both were clearly having a blast with their parts letting them go all-out like this, and it was no surprise that the film seemed to spend as much time with them as it did with the ostensible protagonists. Daddario's Alexis, as the leader of the group, gets the most development, especially as far as her relationship with Johnny Knoxville's preacher Butler is concerned. Yes, Johnny Knoxville is in this, and in one of the more serious roles at that. He plays Butler as human scum personified, every stereotype of a crooked televangelist made flesh. Even compared to the girls, he is without a doubt the most awful sack of shit in the whole movie.

After the big twist thirty minutes in, it's fairly easy to figure out where the movie's headed. Beverly is obviously telegraphed as "final girl" material who will turn against the other girls, as is Mark as her male counterpart. The film turns into a rather conventional cat-and-mouse game within the mansion after the twist is revealed, and while I liked the rather dark, cynical note the film ended on, some of the details in Alexis' plot do raise unwanted questions to which "she and her friends are morons" is only a somewhat satisfying answer. That said, knowing the basics of the twist going in, I liked catching all the clues in the first thirty minutes hinting that the girls were neither the Satanists nor the naïve innocents one might logically suspect them to be. It helps that the film's got a great sense of style, drawing heavily on '80s metal culture in the outfits, the hair, and the soundtrack, all of which come together to give the film a fairly lighthearted, "hell yeah" tone meant to get you to groove to the mayhem on display. The kills are good, especially one involving somebody who used way too much '80s hairspray, enough to make up for the fact that it's not a particularly scary film outside a handful of moments; the atmosphere is just a bit too groovy to allow for that.

The Bottom Line

If you wanna see a creative twist on Satanic horror that nicely satirizes a lot of the real-life hysteria the genre was rooted in, this is a good movie to watch, elevated by a great cast and sense of style that easily make up for its shortcomings.