Society

Society is part of the long tradition of horror as social commentary. Initially, however, Brian Yuzna's 1989 debut, with its flat cinematography and wooden performances, doesn’t look much to write home about. It’s set within an upper-class Beverly Hills community and follows an all-American high school jock (future Baywatch hunk Warlock) who’s feeling alienated from his rich peers and family. Catch it while channel-hopping and you might mistake it for a glossy teen soap. But beneath the whiff of TV movie cheesiness there's a political fury that makes Yuzna's picture irresistible.

This bubbling rage explodes in a debauched finale that makes recent social satires like The Wolf of Wall Street and Spring Breakers look quaint. The stomach-churning make-up effects, by the appropriately-titled Screaming Mad George, could be ripped from a Cronenberg picture. With the general election fresh in our minds, Society's crudely effective evisceration of the elite classes feels even more potent. [Jamie Dunn]