The eternal fascination with the aesthetics of the Antichrist

A frontal sequence showing the birth of a lamb raises the curtain onThe Kingdom of Satan, as if he wanted to announce to us that the Antichrist has just been born. As he already did Penny Lane in Hail Satan?(2019), Scott Cummings, editor of indie director Eliza Hittman, delves into the community of the Satanic Church to capture the mystery surrounding this cult. While Lane's film about American Satanists was articulated in a political key, focusing on their activism in defense of the freedom of worship proclaimed in the United States Constitution, Cummings' portrait is seduced by everyday routines and, above all, by the aesthetics of a subculture.

Structured as if it were a fresco, the tables The individual scenes that make up the film present different devil worshippers in diverse situations, whether starting the dishwasher, hanging clothes, invoking the devil, or in sadomasochistic sessions. It is from this last sequence, one of the most shocking, when The Kingdom of Satan It abandons its documentary premise and reveals itself as a fanciful, experimental, and particularly tedious portrait of this occult sect. Cummings uses visual effects to enhance the rituals and the idea of spells and magic, but even with these tricks, he fails to present Satan's worshippers with the complexity they are supposed to have.