‘You were right Billy, I am a butthead!‘
After all my years of watching and reviewing movies, it’s rare that something genuinely shocks me. Particularly as I have gone through periods in my life where I have actively sought out the most horrifying and depraved films out there. Society blindsided me. I watched it due to the fact that the excellent horror podcast The Evolution of Horror devoted an episode to it and I now feel like I am forever changed. This one is going to be spoilerific so if you don’t want to know the final scores, look away now…
Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) believes that his rich parents and his sister Jenny (Patrice Jennings) are involved in some kind of bizarre sex cult. The truth is something much more sinister.
Society hits a number of familiar tropes in the first half of the movie. Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Rosemary’s Baby – in which our protagonist becomes paranoid and delusional and we never quite know what is real or imagined. But the film’s nightmarish conclusion? That part is utterly unique. Sure, it borrows liberally from the David Cronenberg songbook via the surrealist dreamscapes of David Lynch, but it is the practical effects achieved by legendary make-up artist and effects designer Screaming Mad George that really stand out. The final orgiastic body horror nightmare recalls John Carpenter’s The Thing in its gnarly practical effects, and there are moments here unlike anything I’ve seen before. At one point a character is literally turned inside out for chrissakes.
Director Brian Yuzna would go on to direct such classic films as Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation and The Dentist, so one would expect us to be in B movie territory here, but aside from some occasional shonky editing, Society is actually pretty competently put together. It absolutely doesn’t need to be over 90 minutes long, but the spectacularly named Billy Warlock makes for a compelling lead and both Jennings as his sister Jenny and Devin DeVasquez who plays the town seductress Clarissa do a good job with a pair of roles that amount to little more than eye candy on the page.
I’ve written quite a lot of words now, but I must accept it is all in vain. There are no words to accurately describe the final thirty minutes of this movie. Go and watch it yourself if you dare.