Society
Evan Popplestone

Review by Evan Popplestone

Society

1989
★★★

Rewatched 21 May 2021

Brian Yuzna's debut feature fits into a wider trend of 1980s horrors, also including Blue Velvet, They Live, Heathers and Parents, that probed the sordid underbelly of Reagan-era America. This one is most notable for its notorious final 20 or so minutes, featuring a veritable smorgasbord of gross Cronenbergian body-twisting prosthetics, courtesy of FX artist Screaming Mad George.

The buildup itself is kind of so-so, lacking in real satire beyond a very obvious and on-the-nose "the rich are another species" narrative. Yuzna's directorial approach is fairly typical overwrought 1980s teen horror stuff, much the same as umpteen other efforts from this era.

Society's aforementioned contemporaries are clearly better films. Nonetheless, all of that prosthetic gruesomeness near the end is quite a selling point in its own right.

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