Satan Wants You

Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams's 2023 documentary explains how the Satanic Panic that swept North America in the eighties began. Its source is Michelle Remembers, a book written jointly by the psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith. The book rested on recovered-memory therapy and described Michelle being abducted as a child by a Satanic cult. The documentary shows that none of these claims could be verified, while the book nonetheless entered police training and court proceedings. The consequences were heavy: investigations lasting years, daycare workers wrongly convicted and families broken apart. The film also addresses how the relationship between Pazder and Smith crossed the boundary between therapist and patient. There is plenty of archive material, and television programmes of the period make the effect concrete. Who it's for: those interested in the history of mass hysteria and conspiracy theory. Who it's not for: viewers troubled by detailed claims of child abuse; the documentary relays the book's contents.