Reviews

This is not super deep or nuanced commentary on substance abuse--this is the classic "fall of the all-star athlete" with contemporary dress and social media in the background. It does highlight the situation of teen athletes getting on the painkillers after sports injuries, but this movie was clearly made for entertainment value and not to preach any message deeper than "careful with those Vicodin and never do heroin."

I see some reviewers seem to report strong emotional resonance from the movie.. I just didn't feel that, and it's not because I haven't lost any friends to drugs. The film's exploration of fake friends, teen partying, parents difficulty relating or understanding etc. Are all well executed, but again this is definitely a movie for TV fun--one that you can apparently construe some personal meaning from, too! I just liked it as a Lifetime movie.

The other review mentions this is "an old guy reading Wikipedia" which is totally inaccurate--Mr. Gardiner is comfortably middle-aged, he's just British and as a result perhaps sounds more distinguished.

And yet, this other review still contains a kernel of truth--the film is a little more of an opinion editorial in long-term than what you may consider the standard "documentary." There is one speaker, there are no interviews and the production has a certain ambient quality to it. The music is light and minimally engaging, it does not change much throughout the film and the narrator does not swell with emotion to captivate his audience.

As a result, this film will be somewhere between "calming" and "boring" depending upon your tastes. Oddly enough, I think one could easily fall asleep to this documentary--the intention may be somewhere closer to pleasant background noise than a rollercoaster of emotion laden with hard facts and stats. That's not what Mr. Gardiner is about.

Perhaps most humorously, summarizing the film as "a guy reading Wikipedia" demonstrates that one did not adequately engage with the film--these are one man's opinions, and believe it or not there is a fairly clear message to be found if you remember 1. He is British and 2. He is a Hollywood producer. These things are relevant, but you won't get that from engaging with the movie as it seems to be intended.

If you find this film bland or boring, I would almost guarantee you did not look up at the screen very often. There is a lot going on here that is.. actually it's not subtle at all, but it may roll off of you if you mistake this for a piece of ASMR mush. Peek up or over at the screen every so often, you'll see what I mean.

So I want to say first I love this movie with my entire heart, enough to violate all the strict prohibitions against civilian viewing, ever, on the box art. I'll serve my time if I get caught, it was worth it.

I am fairly certain at least some aspects of this presentation are.. tongue-in-cheek, shall we say. This is obviously not an internal police production, but the premise is that Eric Pryor (who is a lot of fun if you watch him and catch those fast deadpans) solicited these to cops to help train them about.. what to do if the entire city park is hopelessly taken over by Wiccans, Satanists, a Voodoo priesthood and a swarm of gay people I guess?

The tape is hosted by a pastor and retired cop who is familiar with all the different forms of degeneracy as any law enforcement officer should be. Among these is cult abuse, which he describes as a rapidly growing trend in America. Understanding cults can be facilitated by familiarity with abnormal sexology, which I only minored in back in college so I don't know as much as the man on the television.

From here, we don't really differentiate worshipping the Devil from Wicca from being gay anymore, they're all basically.. well not the SAME cult but they all live at the same camper park so their orgies sometimes overlap, except Demon Revels which is a demure ceremony.

We differentiate dabbling (spray-painting a star somewhere) from spiritual Satanism, and spiritual Satanism from the formal hierarchy which the tape asserts is a criminal organization with a corresponding cult. The primary crime of the cult isn't getting money, as you may expect, it seems to be sex with demons and large dogs. A lot of kids get killed in the commission of this, he says.

We walk through that park I keep mentioning with a former Illuminatus who grew a mullet and wore all black to distance himself from his past and assert his new Christian faith. We learn that gang graffiti isn't super important when investigating crime, but a picture of a mushroom likely indicates a thriving human sacrifice cult.

The problem is, rookie cops will see things like a stone altar with two colored candles and a ton of colorful powders and a corpse covered in pentagrams and assume a normal person left those things at the scene of the murder, mass murder or cannabalistic feast. Because of this, our host is always sure to remind the new cops not to leave these things out of their reports, because all the ritual elements might mean something and the investigators should know about that.

We meet 2 or 3 cops who all have sweet pops of color in their wardrobes (host is always fresh of course), who mainly remind us what's important is to talk to the kids and who remind us that they don't investigate religion, they investigate homicides.

I guess this is good if any actual cop ever saw this thing, but I hope oh do I hope that never happened. Remember, this is not a law enforcement training video--its a tape a prosperity pimpin preacher made FOR law enforcement. It's probably not an accurate portrayal of ANYTHING, much less the attitudes of police in the 90s.

That said, I do love this film. It's a lot more fun than you realize til you see if a few times--I would have worn out a real tape version FAST. The best parts about this film are subtle.