Retro Trailer For The Surreal and Grotesque 1989 Body-Horror Film SOCIETY

This week’s retro trailer is for the 1989 horror movie Society, directed by Brian Yuzna. It’s a surreal and grotesque blend of body horror and social satire film.

The story follows Bill Whitney, a wealthy Beverly Hills teenager who begins to suspect that his family, and the high-society world around him, are hiding something sinister.

As paranoia sets in, Bill uncovers a disturbing conspiracy involving his parents, his sister, and the elite of Beverly Hills, who are part of a grotesque, shape-shifting cult that literally feeds off the lower classes.

The film gradually descends from psychological thriller into full-blown body horror, culminating in a famously disturbing and surreal finale known as “the shunting.”

Society offers a wild and crazy critique of class division, privilege, and the parasitic nature of the upper class. It also features over-exaggerated, almost cartoonish grotesquery, as it shows the elite as monstrous entities who sustain themselves by devouring the poor, both figuratively and literally.