“Sorry about the mess,” Lucien Greaves, the cofounder of the Satanic Temple, says to the crew of Hail Satan? as he welcomes them into the organization’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts. The two-story, formerly cream-colored building has been painted black, and a tasteful Sigil of Baphomet decorates the porch.
Like the Satanic Temple, director Penny Lane’s Hail Satan? isn’t quite what it seems: Yes, Lane’s affectionate and funny documentary does feature some pig heads getting slammed onto spikes, and yes, there are some naked writhing people. But Hail Satan? is more interested in the organization’s vision of “contemporary Satanism”—one that doesn’t include worshipping the Devil but does include progressive activism and providing a “socio-political counter-myth” in a country that’s too often characterized as a “Christian nation.”
