Satire can take many forms, but surely none have taken a form so silly, so ridiculous, so downright…. squishy as Brian Yunza’s Society.
Essentially ignored in its native America on release (when it was eventually released), Yunza’s unforgettable impaling of the class system was more warmly regarded in Europe, which wasn’t that surprising considering it the USA had only just emerged from the Reagan era. However, while some attempts at satire are razor sharp, clean and cut directly to the bone like a socially aware scalpel, this movie instead wields it like a four year old trying to keep a grip on rattling M16 machine gun that keeps jerking wildly out of its grasp as it sprays its ammo absolutely everywhere. It doesn’t take long to realise that Society is very much the latter as it’s attempts to point a finger as the rich feels more like the deranged ravings of a boozy homeless man rather than a facts laden pundit – but I have a conspiracy theory for you. What if the dopey, over-eager nature of Yunza’s grand opus was entirely deliberate?
Billy Whitney should be living the high life as one of those rich kids from Beverly Hills who seem to have their entire lives planned out for them as they party as one of the social elite; however, due to a gnawing sense of paranoia, Billy has become utterly convinced that there is something wrong with his family that he just can’t quite put his finger on. His status craving girlfriend doesn’t care and his psychiatrist tries to convince him it’s all in his head, but no matter what Billy does, no matter how much he achieves, he’s utterly convinced that his parents treat him completely differently than his sister, Jenny.
As if this wasn’t enough, he’s finding his eye irresistibly drawn to the sultry Clarissa, the main squeeze of his unfeasibly rich classmate, Ted Ferguson, who really doesn’t like him very much which means his social life is taking just as many hits as his sanity is.
However, Billy finds a branch to cling to thanks to his sister’s recently dumped boyfriend, David Blanchard, who seems to be having the same suspicions as him and has even stored listening devices in Billy’s home to confirm his fears, but after playing a recording that sounds disturbingly like a murderous orgy that his entire family is participating in, David is seemingly killed in a car wreck.
Of course, when Billy takes the recording to his shrink, there’s suddenly nothing on there that sounds incriminating in any way and once again, the troubled young man has to wonder is his folks really are part of some creepy conspiracy, or is it Billy himself that’s losing his marbles. However, once the strange happenings reach their crescendo, the truth is finally revealed and it’s far crazier and way more gooier than Billy could have ever imagined. You think that the rich was feeding off the lower classes before? Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet and if young Whitney isn’t careful, he’ll find himself at the mercy of something called… the shunt – which is a whole lot worse than it sounds. Like way, way worse.
So, let’s get to the bottom of this. Society is dumb, weirdly paced, utterly crazy, questionably acted and ends with a climax so unbelievably extreme you have to openly wonder who exactly it was made for… but while this laundry list of complaints would spell disaster for any normal film, take it from me when I tell you that here, these are all positive points. You see, for the most part, Yunza stages Society as some plastic, shallow, conspiracy thriller that carries all the weight of a cotton bud as various, unfeasibly photogenic, trust fund brats try to stop their perfect lives unraveling around them. In fact, without the occasional, brief spots of (possibly hallucinated) body horror and an eerie opening credit sequence that assures us to be patient because the good shit will be come along soon, the movie feels like someone mounted a thriller for the Hallmark Channel and casted it for the Beverly Hills 90210 generation. In fact, Yunza doubles down on this exact thing by casting Baywatch alumni Billy Warlock as his lead – however, if you recall, there’s another, famous, blunt force satire that mixed extreme gore with a hokey, teen soap opera feel that was released in 1997 that took a little time to be properly admired: Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers.
Watched in the same way you would watch Verhoven’s campy, anti-facist bug blaster, Society suddenly makes perfect sense as the plastic, pretty cast of Ken dolls and Barbies and the Teen Drama acting means that this life or death situation leaves you entirely unprepared for a third act that simply wouldn’t work if the movie was actually played straight. Sure, Yunza adds a fair bit of surrealistic weirdness to the mix with an incest subplot; a large, mentally challenged woman who likes eating hair and such random instances of jarring dialogue such as “How do you like your tea? Cream, sugar or would you like me to pee in it?” that seem designed to catch you unawares. But you cannot be prepared for how wild and subversive Society gets once the cat is out of the bag and the movie is free to utterly cut loose.
Yunza rose to prominence primarily by being Stuart Gordon’s producer who helped get such mind melting delights as Re-Animator and From Beyond to the screen and his time spent there pays of magnificently here when the conspiracy thriller gives way to full blown body horror which sees human physiology takes the consistency of taffy as the flick unleashes one of the most fucked up orgies ever seen on screen. Essentially, it’s revealed that the upper classes of Beverly Hills (and beyond) are actually another species of human entirely who can literally absorb and consume the lower classes during huge, depraved sex parties in an act known ominously as “shunting”. Before you know it, were witnessing a third act that’s handed matters over to Dali loving special effects artist Screaming Mad George who goes to town with the notion of intercourse that sees bodies merge and join with one another like plasticine. But aside from a group of horny people becoming one big melty mass of flesh, we also get a man whose face emerges from his own anus to make a literal butthead, a character whose face turns into a giant hand and a dude who gets a hand rammed into his belly that manages to ultimately turn the fucker inside out. As last act special effects blowouts go, it’s pretty spectacular and magnificently fucked up, but you could argue that Yunza’s absurdist brand of unsubtle social commentary still lives on, especially in films such as Coralie Fargeat’s gleefully unsubtle The Substance that pulled a similar third act shift into latex coated absurdism; but you have to realise that if the events before it weren’t so goofy and exaggerated in order to prepare us, the impact of that stupendous ending probably wouldn’t have worked half as well which is something Verhoven and Fargeat also figured out as well.
Yes, Society may stand and fall on its ending alone, but come on guys – it’s a hell of a fucking ending and it stands as one of the most extreme examples of body horror that exists today that never fails to get a reaction; even if that reaction is outright disgust.
Let Society surround you in its slimy embrace, and prepare to feel the full brunt of the shunt.
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