Well folks, I saw it. I saw the cringe-inducing animated piece of cinema that is Seth Rogen's Sausage Party.

So how was it, you may ask? It was...good.

It was certainly no masterpiece, but it still was funny enough. The various ethnic stereotypes, though sometimes lazy and stale, were mostly creative and clever. I think this is best represented by the relationship between Sammy Bagel Jr. and Kareem Abdul Lavash, in which the film lampoons the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But in all seriousness, this is one messed-up movie. No, I'm not talking about the graphic scenes of torture and violence as the groceries are sliced up and served out for dinner (although I'll never be able to look at baby carrots the same way again). I'm talking about the central message of the film, and what it has to say about religion, how humans delude themselves, and the ugly truth about our bases instincts.

"But Shant," you may exclaim. "This was only a sophomoric comedy. How could it possibly ask the deep philosophical questions that you are saying it asked?"

Well, look at the central premise of the movie. The film opens with the groceries singing about the benevolence of the "gods" (hint: that's us!) as they pick them, check them out of the store, and send them to the "Great Beyond." What the groceries come to realize, however, is that this belief has been cooked up by the store's "non-perishables" (represented by Firewater, Mr. Grits, and Twinkie), in order to shield the groceries from a disturbing truth: the "gods" merely check out the food to torture them, eat them, and rely on them for nourishment and sustenance.

At the heart of all of this is Frank, a sausage who discovers the truth about what is really going on and attempts to show the other groceries the truth. Finding a cookbook, he shows the groceries everything that the humans plan to do with them. The rest of the groceries, horrified by what Frank is telling them, refuse to believe the truth, preferring instead to remain in their comfortable delusions up until the very last moment, when the groceries see with their own eyes that the humans wish to destroy them.

So, what can we gather from this? The whole movie is clearly satirizing religion. Kareem Abdul Lavash is convinced that once he is taken to the "Great Beyond", he will get 72 bottles of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Brenda Bunson and Teresa del Taco, representing Christianity, believe that's it's wrong to act on sexual urges until they are checked out by the "gods". When Frank tries to tell Brenda that he thinks the whole premise of the "Great Beyond" is a lie, Brenda replies that she refuses to believe such horrible things, and that she believes in the "Great Beyond" because it makes her feel better.

This is clearly a reference to Richard Dawkins' idea of the "God Delusion:" people only hold on to religious belief because it gives them a sense of hope and happiness, and not because there is a ring of truth to any of it.

The suppression of sexual urges for the sake of religious belief is also a prominent theme in the movie. Teresa del Taco, representing a stereotypical Mexican Catholic, has sexual feelings for Brenda, but refuses to act on it because it is forbidden in her religion. When Frank and Brenda wriggle out of their packages and touch hands, Brenda later thinks that everything has gone wrong because she upset the gods by acting on her desires. Kareem Abdul Lavash repeatedly calls her a whore for doing so, satirizing the obsession within Islamic cultures with women's purity.

So, we have a religious belief in benevolent "gods" which not only suppresses the characters' natural desires, but also divides them into warring groups, as represented by the conflict between Sammy Bagel Jr. and Lavash. Religion is clearly seen as a corrupting and regressive force that takes the guise of a comforting belief system.

Alright, so the movie's message is nothing special. Just standard New Atheist fare. But what I think is interesting is what happens after the groceries defeat "religion". What do they do? Do they put aside their tribal differences and unite to create a better humanity? Now that the gods are dead (quite literally I may add), do they transcend to a place beyond good and evil? Do they build a more advanced society that is free from the shackles of religion?

The answer to all of these questions is no. Instead, they engage in an orgy.

A massive, disgusting, perverted, eye-scarring orgy.

And here is where the messaging of the movie becomes downright horrifying. The film's...um...climax...is perverse by even a modern secular person's standards, never mind from the perspective of a devout Roman Catholic or Muslim. One need only look at the dark comedic bit where Mr. Grits takes out his anger on the crackers in a display of animal lust to show that the orgy was not taboo on simply religious lines.

So here's my question: If getting rid of religion was such a good idea, as the film seems to be saying, is this really the end result? A disgusting display of sexuality? This is a pretty cynical view of humanity, in that religion isn't holding us back from attaining higher goals, but that it is merely keeping our more animal instincts in check. If religion is just fake, so are all the other principles that we hold up as a society, including basic morality.

And this, according to the film, is the ultimate joke. With no religion to hold on to, we just become no more than animals. In relinquishing our subservience to a higher authority, we only become subservient to our basest instincts, and the slightest pretense of a grand moral system completely dissipates. In the final analysis, we are not noble savages, but savage nobles, only holding up a facade of dignity and right and wrong because it shields us from the unbearable truth: Only a fleeting rush of dopamine can truly distract us from the fact that we are all just spinning endlessly, on a speck of dust in an ocean of nothingness, blindly searching for some sort of meaning until we finally disappear into oblivion.

Or maybe it's just a stupid comedy, and I'm just over thinking things at three in the morning, like I do with everything else.