Described as “counterbalance against dominant religious privilege,” modern Satanism in America is the subject of Penny Lane’s new documentary feature “Hail Satan?,” which doubles as an enticing recruitment campaign making progressive thinkers consider the notion that we may all be Satanists at heart.
A filmmaker with a taste for the bizarre — and the ability to find the humor it it — Lane delves into the emergence of the Satanic Temple, a global Satanist organization headquartered in Salem, Mass., with the irreverence required to provide a highly entertaining and incisive portrait of a maligned group.
To the dismay of many, their ideology adores a malevolent failed angel while opposing the exalting of Christianity as the default religion in the United States and the world, thus challenging the influence of all religion in what’s supposedly a secular government.