Writers / Directors: Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes / Stars: David Dastmalchian, Ingrid Torelli, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi / Distributed by: Shudder / Runtime: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
Review by Paul Dunne
17th April 2024 (Released on Shudder: 19th April 2024)
The Pitch: Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy hosts a syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack's beloved wife. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other- unaware he is about to unleash evil into the living rooms of America.
Late Night With The Devil is a film that arrives on Shudder with ‘buzz’, both good and bad. Made last year on a shoestring budget, reportedly under $2 Million. The good buzz was largely generated by its impressive trailer and plotline. The Bad? The use of three AI-generated inter-titles in the film. It’s best we get that out of the way first, as I feel this argument over the use of AI has become a distraction from the film itself, with some threatening to boycott its release in protest. Personally, whilst I don’t approve of the use of AI in creative endevours where a human could be generating the images within a reasonable budget, it is just for three brief moments in the film, and I understand why they retreated to this method given that the budget was tight. My hope is that the production entities and directors are suitably chastened by the backlash, and won’t indulge in the use of AI again. And if I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t notice at the time I watched the movie.
Now on to the film itself. Taking elements from other sub-genres, such as the mockumentary, Late Night With The Devil remixes elements, mostly from the British BBC Halloween one-off Ghostwatch and Americanises them, along with a splash of folkloric Eldritch creep and possession horror. But does it do it successfully? Well, there’s genuine commitment forced on the film by the dent of its budget, so we get a cast of unfamiliar faces and David Dastmalchian, who is just unknown enough to help sell the illusion of ‘real’ to the audience. Further accentuating the reality of it all is the imagined competitiveness between Jack Delroy and Johnny Carson. This cements the piece taking place in a real place, in a real time. The Michael Ironside-narrated extended ‘sign of the times’ opening also helps. But the real kudos belong to the actors who resist the urge to wink at the camera, despite the fact that the whole thing is a kind of wink to us, the audience, anyway.
The old adage of ‘don’t haunt anyone who isn’t already haunted’ pays off extremely well with Jack Delroy, who belongs to a secret society that meets ‘in the tall trees’ and whose wife has died. Jack is the man who must pay for his ambitions and for daring to almost meet them. There is an unwilling nod to Dastmalchian’s comic book career as the writer of Count Crowley (from Dark Horse Comics), who is a late-night host of horror movie marathons and happens to battle demons. Only here, there isn’t a battle. Jack Delroy has already opened the door to darkness. There are layers of theatrical flair to the characters, particularly Ian Bliss’ spiritual debunker and Fayssal Bazzi’s psychic, who both play their parts to the hilt and are clearly the two actors having the most fun. But every member of the cast gets a chance to shine. Ingrid Torelli’s Possession Victim is on par in places with Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist and she imbues her character with a detached, otherworldly weirdness. It’s a testament to the filmmakers that for a few minutes, each character gets their own film, whilst the storytelling whole remains intact. Things branch off and then are pruned back whilst the tree remains in bloom.
Even with the slender running time, the Cairnes’ stretch the scares to take place at the last possible moments they can. There’s a gruesome, messy slimy nature to some of the sequences that amps up the grim nature and sells the human cost. People bleed for this. Cost is foremost in this film. Not just its budget, but the moral cost of success and the Faustian nature of getting what you want. The Cairnes sell the backstage bustle of a live TV show, although it needs to be a little more handheld and shaken to fully work, almost as if the movie still wants you to know it’s a movie. Overall though, we buy into illusion because we want to believe at any cost. The film is, in many places, genuinely disturbing in all the best ways these movies should be. Late Night With The Devil deserves its success, one that hopefully the Cairnes won’t have traded with Satan for!
Watch Late Night With The Devil in glorious 4K at The Prince Charles Cinema now! Or check it out on Shudder from 19th April 2024.
