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On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies<\/a> from any moment in film<\/a> history.<\/p>\n First, the BAIT<\/strong>: a weird genre pick and why we\u2019re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE<\/strong>: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, \u201cIs this old cult classic actually worth recommending?\u201d<\/p>\n The Bait: Stars, Stripes, and\u2026 Shunting? <\/p>\n There\u2019s a smorgasbord of Fourth of July thrillers and horror movies<\/a> worth checking out in these Trying Times. Brian De Palma\u2019s \u201cBlow Out\u201d gets a strong reaction from anyone living in fear of the alleged police state, and you can\u2019t celebrate the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cJaws\u201d<\/a> without mentioning it as one of pop culture\u2019s great indictments on local government.<\/p>\n Corruption is still the name of the game in this week\u2019s After Dark \u2014 Brian Yuzna<\/a>\u2018s eye-bursting, jaw-dropping, spine-inverting \u201cSociety<\/a>\u201d \u2014 but Independence Day and the fall of democracy don\u2019t directly factor into his shocking directorial debut. A masterful entry in body horror<\/a>, Yuzna\u2019s gross-out satire about extreme wealth is set in a strange cult lurking beneath the shiny veneer of Beverly Hills. The movie had its world premiere in 1989, but \u201cSociety\u201d wouldn\u2019t get a wide release in the United States for three more years. That\u2019s despite a notorious must-see ending (with special effects from genre legend Screaming Mad George) and buzzy popularity among European and UK audiences.<\/p>\n Billy Warlock stars as Big Beautiful\u00a0Bill Whitney: a high schooler who doesn\u2019t fit in with his well-to-do family from Southern California. As a creepy sense of capitalist consumption circles mom Nan (Connie Danese), dad Jim (Charles Lucia), and oddly sexy sister Jenny (Patrice Jennings), Bill can\u2019t help but wonder if they know something about the scary feelings he shared with his shrink (Ben Slack). A grab-bag cast of archetypes flesh out the rest of this chunky puzzle written by Woody Keith and Rick Fry.<\/p>\n Not unlike our country\u2019s current predicament, \u201cSociety\u201d is a slow-burn, suburban-centric mystery (somewhat akin to a neutered \u201cBlue Velvet\u201d?) that explodes into a grotesque display of gore and neoliberalism. U.S. distributors were deterred by Yuzna\u2019s frivolous approach to subjects like class war, violence, and incest. 36 years later, that hasn\u2019t stopped Trump from ruling over the Republican party.<\/p>\n This past week, Congress passed seismic legislation widely expected to benefit the rich and decimate the poor. Watched in the middle of what could be a deathblow for the American Dream, \u201cSociety\u201d won\u2019t make you feel \u201cbetter.\u201d But there\u2019s something to be said for using its gelatinous feel as a kind of shunt\u00a0[spoiler-filled wink]\u00a0for seriocomic catharsis. Whether you\u2019re distracted by your phone, doom-scrolling on social media \u2014\u00a0or rewinding to double-check, \u201cAre her boobs and butt really pointing\u2026 the SAME WAY?\u201d \u2014\u00a0this will scratch the fold in your brain where the far-right meets billionaires like Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n \u201cSociety\u201d is streaming on Night Flight Plus, Fandango at Home, FuboTV, and more.<\/p>\n The Bite: We Are Failing Our Boys! <\/p>\n With his skin ripped, sucked, and absorbed in countless different directions by the cannibalistic and orgiastic elite, Bill\u2019s friend and eventual shunting victim David Blanchard (Tim Bartell) embodies a literal argument against gerrymandering. It\u2019s a miracle the utterly useless Milo (Evan Richards) gets away in the end, but there\u2019s no doubt he\u2019s voting \u2014 red, blue, pink, who cares \u2014 in the next election.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rich have always sucked off low-class shit like you,\u201d might not be the most subtle dialogue ever written\u2026. and that bizarre street fight with slick-back bully Ferguson (Ben Meyerson) makes zero sense. But what \u201cSociety\u201d lacks in nuance and logic, it makes up for with Yuzna\u2019s fierce commitment to rendering a practical hell on Earth<\/a>. Released earlier this year, there\u2019s a behind-the-scenes documentary<\/a> about \u201cSociety\u201d that picks apart the meaning of the script even further. It\u2019s been divisive, but might be worth checking out if you\u2019re interested in dissecting its story as an allegory for generational trauma.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a metaphor about abortion access hiding somewhere between Bill\u2019s two septic love interests, Shauna (Heidi Kozak) and Clarissa (Devin DeVasquez), too. But that\u2019s hard to pin down in a film squishy enough to justify several different interpretations. No matter which read you pick, there\u2019s no question that \u201cSociety\u201d lets its final guy down in the end. Bill survives, but at what cost?<\/p>\n Watching \u201cThe Human Centipede\u201d \u2014\u00a0aka the Authoritarian Communism of Extreme Horror Movies \u2014 genre fans agreed, \u201cIt would be the worst to be stuck in the middle.\u201d Enduring \u201cSociety\u201d as the world stands in 2025, it\u2019s a toss-up whether it\u2019s psychologically harder to be shunted first\u2026 or second. As the boundaries between right and wrong, and fact and fiction, start to blur, the Fourth of July feels an awful lot like waiting for the other goopy shoe (or is it foot?) to drop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday nights,\u00a0IndieWire After Dark\u00a0honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[31840,31841,171,1020,31842,31843,53,1194,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-39953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-body-horror","9":"tag-brian-yuzna","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-indiewire-after-dark","13":"tag-midnight-movies","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-society","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114798931809286656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"'Sinners,'](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/rev-1-GRC-FP-023_High_Res_JPEG_645d6a.jpeg\")
<\/a> ![\"JURASSIC](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/MCDJUWO_UV105.jpg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"SOCIETY,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/MCDSOCI_EC033-1.jpg\")
Heidi Kozak and Billy Warlock in \u2018Society\u2019 (1992)Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"SOCIETY,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/MCDSOCI_EC027.jpg\")
Billy Warlock in \u2018Society\u2019 (1992)Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"SOCIETY,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/MCDSOCI_EC029-1.jpg\")
Tim Bartell in \u2018Society\u2019 (1992)Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n