The Satanic panic is making a comeback in popular culture (see: Edie Munson in Stranger Things), but did it really ever leave? You can definitely feel its lingering effects when social media is used as a tool to spread misinformation. Hysteria! Creator Matthew Scott Keene aims to capture this spirit in his new Peacock series; the film is set in a small town in Michigan in the late 1989s, where high school metalhead kids clash with their conservative parents. There’s also a supernatural mystery afoot, adding to the local sheriff’s horror, played by cinema legend Bruce Campbell.
Prior to Hysteria! arriving just in time for a spooky season, io9 spoke to Kane and his co-writer and executive producer David A. Goodwin to learn more about the show’s origins, intentions, the fantastic soundtrack, and more.
Cheryl Eddy, io9: “The Satanic panic has been prominent in recent years — it was a major theme in Stranger Things and there was a documentary about its origins released last year, Satan Wants You. Does Hysteria! handle the Satanic panic in a way that adds something new to the conversation?”
Matthew Scott Keene: “I can’t speak to the documentary that was released… I tried to avoid all media related to the Satanic panic last year or so just to keep focused on the film in front of me. But I think what we’re really doing is trying to make connections between then and now. When I first wrote this script in 2019, there were a lot of fears in my mind that I believe a lot of other people were feeling too. Unfortunately, I think they still feel them to this day, that there are so many ways right now to distort and disseminate the truth, and this dissemination completely alters many people’s view of reality and the world around them.”
So I wanted to take that view and perspective on what’s happening now and in the past few years and apply it once again to the Satanic panic, when I felt something very similar was happening. This is the time when some people really believed that Smurfs and He-Man and all sorts of cartoon characters were trying to lure your kids into some kind of Satanic cabal in secret. We did it this way because it’s really fun to return and look back at that era and talk about heavy metal music and John Hughes movies and Video Nasties and all that kind of stuff. But for me, this is where I think we stand out from other things.”
David A. Goodwin: “I think the essence of the show — I came to the show after Matt wrote the pilot, and what I really connected with (is) how does it relate to ‘Satanic panic’ is this universality of parental fear of what their child might be up to. Is my teenage son going out at night and getting into trouble? And the answer is yes. The fear of these parents, and how it manifests, ends up turning into something that isn’t just happening during the Satanic panic. Every generation goes through some version of this. The Satanic panic — there’s a bit of nostalgia for the ’80s, a pre-internet and mobile phone era, but the world is changing. And it ends up being a great way to experience that, and adding this level of horror, procedural crime, and comedy.”
io9: “You mentioned heavy metal. Hysteria! was clearly made by people who love metal. What is your background in this area? Also, did you curate the songs you knew you wanted to include in the soundtrack?”
Keene: “To answer your first question, my background with metal is that I received a lot of ’80s metal albums for Christmas throughout my childhood. Iron Maiden, Metallica, and all that kind of stuff were definitely things given to me by my dad and my brother too — he was two years older than me, so he was always a couple steps ahead of me. I was in a band in high school, but it would be embarrassing to call us metal. We weren’t even close.”
To get to the show’s music, we had a great music supervisor named Jen Malone, who composed the songs for his Wednesday, alongside Euphoria, among other big things. A lot of what you hear in the show, I would say about 75% of the songs were pinpointed in the script… the idea was ‘we want to set this scene to this song for a reason.’ Then the other 25% was more of a collaboration ‘not quite sure what this moment needs.’ Jen has a wealth of knowledge much deeper than David or me when it comes to the musical side of things. She can come in and give us buckets and buckets of great choices for things we would have never come across.”
Goodwin: “I don’t have a background in metal. I had never listened to it before I started working on this show, although I was surprised to discover that I actually like some metal songs. I didn’t even know they were called metal. Matt gave me a real primer on what I needed to listen to, and I grew to love it. It has a lot of depth. I think that’s the other part that’s easily overlooked as being shallow and bad and dangerous. There’s a lot of depth in the music, and in the lyrics of these amazing bands that play this music. It was an incredibly expansive creative experience for me as I was exposed to something I had rejected. That was my experience on the show.”
io9: Bruce Campbell plays a character that seems perfectly suited for him, but also different from anything we’ve seen him do before — the wise-cracking town mayor trying to deal with all the crazy things happening around him. How much of the role was tailored for Bruce once he came on board? Is he the reason the show is set in Michigan?
Keene: “He’s not the reason the show is set in Michigan, but being from Michigan definitely helps with the connection. I grew up and a lot of the crew grew up in southeast Michigan. I’ve been a huge fan of Bruce and Sam Raimi throughout my career in high school, and the audition tape was sent to Bruce during our casting for the film. We wrote the first four episodes or so, sent him the pilot script, and he responded well to it and signed on board. But very, very rapidly after Bruce signed on, the writers’ strike hit, so we didn’t know how this role would fit Bruce. But miraculously — or shouldn’t be a miracle, he’s a great actor — he came in and knocked it out of the park in the first four episodes. And after that, it was really fun to write for Bruce Campbell now that we knew who we were writing for. It was a blast. He’s a legend for a reason. He came in and gave us a fantastic performance.”
Goodwin: “I and Matt are some of the biggest fans. I couldn’t quite believe it when the news came that he would be joining the show. And (was) happy to work with him, and happy to write about him, and he made a part that’s multi-layered. The performers, it’s a two-step operation. They have to create their characters and make them believable in a world that bends reality. And this is his autobiography.”
Hysteria! premieres on Peacock on October 18th.
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