Occult themes, practical FX, retro synth soundtrack... Of course I was looking forward to "Satanic Panic". However, I was ready for just a slightly more powerful punch.
Make no mistake, it's an entertaining horror comedy, with the horror parts, in the sum, being better than the comedy bits. Can't promise a laugh-out-loud moment, because for me there wasn't one. The funniest bits are in the 1st half of the movie. A lot of "Satanic Panic" resembles old-school, starting with, of course, Practical FX (quite a lot of gore & it's good), that retro-type synthwave original score, the very theme of witches and covens, and ending with the poster. So you know, lovers of all this will be more or less happy - I was. The characters are simple and very much clicheic, as is the plot, even though it's going to hide that to the very end at which moment a little voice in your head might say "Well I guess that's that". My point is, I was craving for a climax that would top the prior crazy moments in this flick. No matter the characters, the actors and their performances were quite fine. And fun. Probably a little more fun for horror buffs, because there are some familiar faces. On a side note, in the end I was a little disappointed with the main character, I feel like there could've been more to her story. As for the visuals, the cinematography was fairly simple, saturated, colorful, low-budget but creative. The gore was great though, classic, proven to be great kind of stuff. Gotta love the gore.
Let's put it this way - if I dissect "Satanic Panic" into bits and pieces, there's a lot of flawed ones, but overall it's a great, fun, no-brakes kind of entertainment for anyone who's into horror enough. My rating: 6/10.
