2024 | rated R | starring David Dastmalchian | written & directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes | 1 h 33m | 3 1/2 out of 5 stars |
It’s Halloween night, 1977 and host of the late night talk show “Night Owls” Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) has planned a spooktacular line-up of guests to get himself out of a ratings slump and save the show. With the help of his dutiful sidekick Gus (Rhys Auteri) he brings out a series of guests including a psychic medium (Fayssal Bazi), a skeptic (Ian Bliss) and a young girl (Ingrid Torelli) who was recently rescued from a cult house and may or may not still be host to a demon.
A shining light of originality for the “There’s nothing new out there” crowd, Late Night with the Devil isn’t the truly frightening horror show that it’s 70s vibe and found footage aesthetic might first seem, but it’s one hell of a fun movie. The film opens with a mini documentary of sorts, setting the stage for what we’re about to see and giving us crucial back story of host Jack Delroy and his curious rise to a talk show chair to rival Johnny Carson. Delroy has made sacrifices for the show, including having to watch as his beloved wife died of cancer. Satanic panic is starting to take hold around the country and his show ratings are taking a nose dive, a perfect collision of TV sensationalism and the occult. Then, we just watch the episode.
That was the most fun part of this movie for me, watching is recreate with pitch perfect parody the style of a fairly lame 1970s late night talk show. Jack banters with Gus, makes jokes about himself and Jimmy Carter and throws to cheesy commercial break title cards. The world of “Night Owls” is fully fleshed out and writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes are trusting their audience to just watch an episode play out in its entirety. If you’re waiting for the big chaotic blow-out at the end, you’ll be missing the point. This movie has a long wind-up, but the wind-up is also a lot of fun.
The supernatural creeps into the show little by little, and as it does the movie loses that found footage grain and becomes a glossier production. It shows its hand early and often. While Dastmalchian is perfect in the role (the actor’s unforgettable face most famous for not being The Joker in The Dark Knight), the show guests lean more toward the theatrical. Both psychic Great Cristou and skeptic Haig play characters that stick out as characters mugging for the camera. Bliss’ James Randi-inspired skeptic who promises to write a check to anyone that he can’t debunk is particularly a hoot. Things crank up a notch again when young Lilly and her psychologist (Laura Gordon) come on to talk kidnapping and satanic items. At Jack’s insistence to perform a live seance on the girl that everything goes to hell. The movie has a lot of fun with a dagger that Lilly brings on the set, tracing it around the studio until it’s sitting on a table pointing directly at Jack.
During the show’s commercial breaks, the movie cuts to black and white “behind the scenes” footage as the crew scampers to figure out what’s going on with the more explainable occurrences, mysterious electrical surges and Jack’s allies crumbling around him. However, ultimately, how you feel about Late Night with the Devil is going to come down to how tolerate/satisfied you are with the payoff. One that for me was overblown and underwhelming, where the film’s reality and found footage aesthetic was stripped off entirely. But it also wasn’t so outlandish that it cut into the good will of what we’d previously seen. It breaks the movie, but it does stay on the theme delivering a poetic finale for our anti-hero.
Found footage movies are notorious horror trash. Late Night with the Devil makes the format work in a refreshing way. In that way, it’s like the 1992 UK TV-movie Ghostwatch that centers around a Halloween night news report of a haunted house and the family desperate to prove they are being tormented by ghosts. While both are straight-faced recreations of actual shows, Late Night’s ace in the hole is Jack Delroy. From beginning to end both the character and Dastmalchian’s star making performance carry this movie, stealing the limelight from the devil himself.