Satranic Panic (2023)
When Max is murdered by a mysterious demon-worshipping cult, his partner Jay (Zarif) and best friend Aria (Cassie Hamilton) set out to avenge his death. Directed by prolific Aussie filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, and co-written by Mackay, Cassie Hamilton and Benjamin Pahl Robinson, Satranic Panic is a low-budget, character-driven, comedy-horror road movie. Quite similar in tone to Mackay’s previous feature, T-Blockers, Satranic Panic also unfurls as a love letter to schlocky b-movie horrors and features transgender characters who make a defiant stand against intolerance. And demons.
Retaining most of the crew from T-Blockers, including cinematographer/editor Aaron Schuppan, composer Alex Taylor and sound designer Roisin Gleeson, Mackay’s approach is as bold as it was on her earlier film, but with slightly higher production values. While Satranic Panic is still a very low budget affair, it’s just as much a labour of love and exhibits an equally off-kilter yet exuberant tone. The low budget doesn’t hinder Mackay’s imaginative direction, nor her flare for creating well rounded, believable characters with rich inner lives and back stories. While these characters face off demonic adversaries, they must also navigate a society in which their very existence is debated in increasingly hostile ways. These are strong, funny, flawed and fully rounded individuals though, and more than a few wisecracks, epiphanies and pointed observations ensue as they set about slaying demons.
Mackay expertly uses the horror genre to explore the adversity faced by transgender people, and the demons in Satranic Panic can be seen as internal as well as external forces: characters struggle with self-acceptance and discuss inner battles with dysphoria, as well as the wider ongoing struggles to obtain acceptance in society. These issues are especially prescient in today’s political climate. In the past few weeks alone in the US, for example, several anti-diversity executive orders signed by Trump aim to reverse protections for transgender and non-binary people, and to curtail trans people's access to medical care and legal documents that reflect their gender identity.
Using a road movie narrative enables Mackay to open up the story as the characters move between small towns and dive bars in the Australian Outback, staying in run-down motels or sleeping in their car. Tension is introduced with the character of Nell (Lisa Fanto), a potential love interest for Aria, but who may also have shady connections with the cult, and her presence causes ructions between Aria and Jay. There’s something like magic-realism in the way the characters navigate their world and confront supernatural (and non-supernatural adversaries). Mackay has said that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been a huge influence on her work, with its depiction of ordinary characters thrust into extraordinary situations, and battling supernatural enemies, but confronting them in a matter-of-fact way, and always with sardonicism. And like many of the monsters featured in Buffy, the demons in Satranic Panic can be seen as metaphors for personal and socio-political strife the characters struggle with - namely intolerance and transphobia.
With its drool humour, spunky characters and commentary on the importance of friendship and chosen family, Satranic Panic is a campy riot that deftly balances horror, pathos and humour, and is further evidence that Mackay is a punk-as-fuck, vital new voice in horror cinema.
