Chattanooga Film Festival Reviews - Part 2
Documentaries play a key part in the Chattanooga Film Festival. Here are my reviews of two that were programmed this year:
King on Screen - The cinematic adaptations of writer Stephen King are the subject of Daphné Baiwir’s film. A great many directors appear on-camera to talk about how his works inspired them and how they approached transferring those works to the screen. Among the interviewees are Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), Mike Flanagan (Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep), and Mick Garris (Sleepwalkers, The Stand). They’ve got amazing anecdotes about the making of their own movies. Darabont’s recollection of Tom Hanks’s generosity toward Michael Clarke Duncan on The Green Mile is particularly wonderful. More than that, though, they remind us that the key trait in King’s stories isn’t their scariness, it’s their humanity. Strong characterization is always at the core. Oddly, the documentary doesn’t touch on the King-directed Maximum Overdrive. Just about every other adaptation gets at least a passing mention, making this essential viewing for fans of the author and the movies made from his tales.
Satan Wants You - Those of us who remember the “satanic panic” of the 1980s will be utterly absorbed by this exploration of its origin. Directors Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor look at the book Michelle Remembers and the impact it made. The best-seller claimed to tell the tale of how psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder helped patient Michelle Smith access repressed memories of satanic ritual abuse when she was a child. The details were horrifying, involving slaughtered animals, murdered babies, and sexual assault. Other psychiatrists picked up on the idea of satanic cults preying on children, and daytime talk show hosts like Geraldo Rivera exploited it. The problem, as the documentary carefully lays out, is that the story Pazder and Smith spun was dubious at best. There are lots of wild twists and turns here that make clear how fully the public was duped into believing this was a common occurrence. The filmmakers also shrewdly point out how satanic panic persists today in the form of Pizzagate/QAnon and its preposterous claims of a Democrat-run satanic pedophile ring. Satan Wants You is amusing and scary in the same breath.
For part one of my coverage from the Chattanooga Film Festival, click here.
