Week 13 (Sept 13 – 19) – Cult Movies: Oh, you thought I meant the other kind of cult movies? Sacrifices to the gods of entertainment must be made, so hop up on the altar!
Raw, unapologetically queer and fueled by the kind of DIY adrenaline that only a teenage auteur working with zero budget can conjure, Alice Maio Mackay keeps making movies that are beyond interesting, like T-Blockers, Carnage for Christmas and Castration Movie. This was Mackay’s fourth feature, and it starts with a tragedy. Max—trans drag queen Aria’s (Cassie Hamilton) brother and non-binary partner Jay’s (Zarif) boyfriend—is brutally murdered by a demon-worshipping cult. When the local authorities write off the hate crime as just another statistic, Aria and Jay decide they’ve had quite enough of the world’s bullshit. Armed with a rusty machete salvaged from a shed and Aria’s sixth-sense knack for sniffing out the supernatural, the duo hit the dusty highways of Australia to hunt down the demons pulling the strings.
Of course, the road trip doesn’t go smoothly. Enter Nell (Lisa Fanto), a mysterious figure from their past who tags along, instantly capturing Aria’s heart while setting off massive alarm bells for a deeply skeptical, jealous Jay, especially given Nell’s ties to the shady Dr. Fenway (Chris Asimos).
Part musical, part creature feature, Satranic Panic doesn’t bother hiding its low-budget seams. It wears them like a glittering, blood-spattered badge of honor. Mackay expertly weaponizes the horror genre to explore real-world transphobia, inner struggles with dysphoria and the exhausting reality of navigating a hostile society. The demons here are wonderfully multi-layered: they’re supernatural ghouls with Jar Jar Binks-style tongues, sure, but they’re also living, breathing metaphors for the systemic intolerance that tries to grind marginalized folks down every single day.
You can watch this on Fawesome.
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