Realm of Satan

 On its streaming site, MUBI suggests that Scott Cummings' Realm of Satan (2024) is a documentary about the Church of Satan.  In fact, it is something more interesting, I think, a peculiar hybrid between objective documentary footage showing actual Church of Satan members gathering for a ritual conclave (and engaging in a little group sex in advance of the ceremony) and strange visionary imagery that has a mythological, even Jungian, aspect.  Cummings, in interviews, has said that he was influenced by early films by Werner Herzog but there is no voice-over to explicate the odd things that we are seeing and almost no dialogue -- for most of its length the movie is silent or features diegetic musical sequences (for instance a woman singing "Gloomy Sunday" off-key and another lady producing music from a jukebox to which she dances rather gracelessly.)  The film is shot mostly in tableaux -- that is, shots lasting 15 to 30 seconds, displaying elaborately decorated interiors with figures standing at some distance from the camera.  Everyone looks right into the lens.  The shape of the movie is like Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise with gloomy black and white interiors and desolate outside scenes populated by eccentric characters who bicker or simply stare into the camera.  Herzog does something similar in his short movie Brother Huey's Sermon which documents a Black preacher's florid sermon intercut with traveling shots of the slums around the Church and interpolated portrait-style images of the preacher holding his Bible and posing for the camera.  

The movie is interesting, about 83 minutes long, and perverse.  I can imagine several approaches to this material -- one might emphasize the mundane aspects of the Satanist's life:  that is, showing them at a fast food place or walking a dog or shopping for groceries; one could emphasize the ritual practice in their religion and treat the audience to a few Black Masses with naked women on the high altar; one could interview the Satanists after the manner of Erroll Morris and let them talk long enough to reveal the folly of their beliefs -- anyone interviewed for a long enough period will end up saying things that completely contradict other statements made by the subject.  Or, I suppose, one might show the Satanists in a positive light, as people with the courage of their peculiar convictions and engaged in occult practices that have some efficacy in the real world.  The most challenging approach, I think, is the last and this is, indeed, the angle that Cummings takes in this movie. Cummings' Satanists are mostly magicians of various kinds and the film dramatizes this aspect of their beliefs by featuring magic performance on-stage --there is a guy stage-named the Great Cardone who does some impressive card prestidigitation and, then, performs a routine in which he makes a scantily clad assistant vanish from a small box into which she squeezes.  At one point, a person meditating nonchalantly hovers in the air.  A small black car zips across the United States starting in a place that looks like Palm Springs in California and, a few hours later, appearing in Poughkeepsie, New York.  The car, carrying members of the cult to a ritual conclave, leaves a trail of fire on the highway as it accelerates.  A paralyzed man shaves and, during this process, his reflection periodically blinks out, leaving the mirror mysteriously empty.  The High Priest struts across his kitchen with bare goat legs -- it's a startling effect.  At the film's outset, we see a goat laboriously giving birth.  The scene is shot from middle distance and lasts a couple minutes.  Later, a woman in a black hooded cape bares her breast and suckles the baby goat.  The various Satanists are depicted as having occult powers as a result of their affiliation with Lucifer.  At one point, the High Priest and High Priestess mix a foaming potion fizzing and gushing dry-ice fog; they toast the camera.  One woman spends a long time in her closet selecting a suitably black outfit for the conclave.  The ritual is underwhelming, just some people in what look like dark choir robes, shouting "Hail Satan!" and nonsense words in a dark suite of rooms.  The camera doesn't move except twice -- there's an austere tracking shot through the chambers in which the ritual celebrants are located; a Steadicam shot drifts down a suburban street in the neighborhood of the house where the ritual takes place.  Mostly, its unclear what we are seeing but the film has a kind of austere integrity and doesn't condescend to its peculiar performers, all of whom seem to be intensely aware of the observing camera.  The cult is under siege.  Someone has poured gas on the portion of the "Halloween House" owned by Joe "Netherworld" Mendillo, apparently in Poughkeepsie -- on ring camera footage, we see the vandals toting jerry-cans of gas onto the porch and lighting the house, which burns like a torch.  A few shots, later someone pounds a sign into the vacant lot where the house was previously located:  the Satanists are quixotically offering $6666 dollars for tips as to the identities of the arsonists.  In the final sequence, a man who is paralyzed navigates his wheelchair through his small, empty house.  He rolls into his bedroom and, with great difficulty, drags himself into his bed, rolling back and forth with inert legs to get himself into position.  He shuts off the light and a body of radiant gold light rises f rom his supine form and ambles up into the sky where it does cartwheels.  The film is haunting in an austere, understated way and worth watching.