There’s nothing I love more than a documentary about the conception of one of the most notorious cult classics ever made. Brian Yuzna’s 1989 horror satire is a gross, vile look at the amorality of the affluent. What I don’t like is a documentary that paints itself as a look at the making of a movie and is in reality conspiracy claptrap garbage sexual abuse, ritual child abuse, and sexual violence that has about two percent to do with Brian Yuzna’s movie.
Watching “The Darkside of Society” is almost like sitting down to talk with someone about the creation of “Troll 2” only for the topic to quickly devolve in to discussions about sex slavery, snuff films and red rooms. It’s vile, disturbing, and it’s the basis for easily the worst documentary I have ever seen. Larry Wade Carrell’s movie is barely eighty minutes of rapid fire nonsense that is all baseless, speculative, and intended to fire up a certain crowd (they’re between the P and R subsect) rather than touch on actual issues.
The director doesn’t seem all that interested in celebrating or talking about “Society,” only spending about ten minutes of the movie on the pretty excellently conducted scenes of body deformation in “Society.” Then without any preamble the main topic Zeph E. Daniel begins muttering “It’s real. This really happened! It’s all real. This happened to children.” Obviously he doesn’t mean this literally, but he empathically charges in head first in to endless conspiracy theories, and rumors, and ideas about sexual sacrifices, and horrendous sexual violence involving children.
It’s all absolutely painful, pointless, and dreadfully dull. Rather than commit to actual change, “The Darkside of Society” is about as performative and exploitative as Werner Herzog.
It will most likely infuriate fans of Brian Yuzna’s movie that have followed it and stuck by it from its origins as a reviled genre film in to itsa evolution in to a bonafide cult classic.
This year Popcorn Frights is held virtually and in person from August 8th through August 18th at Savor Cinema Fort Lauderdale, Florida.