![Late Night With the Devil](/binary/bc2c/late_night.jpg)
Late Night With the Devil
2023, R, 93 min. Directed by Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes. Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi, Ingrid Torelli.
REVIEWED By Trace Sauveur, Fri., March 22, 2024
Late Night With the Devil is not a movie. At least, that’s not what it presents itself as.
Cameron and Colin Cairnes’ film starts with a narrated profile of fictional 1970s late-night talk show host Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian in a role where he’s able to perfectly filter entertainment-business cynicism through a veil of audience-facing charm) and his variety program Night Owls that acts as an alternative to the likes of Johnny Carson. Despite enjoying modest success, Jack lives in the ceaseless shadow of his contemporaries, a fact exacerbated by his despair when his wife succumbs to lung cancer.
As ratings continue to dip, Jack, looking for anything to stir up conversation, plots a special Halloween broadcast in which he’s going to invite on supposedly possessed young girl Lilly (Torelli), her haunting borne out of a satanic cult written about in a book by clairvoyant June (Gordon), who also appears on the show.
Ostensibly, this film is actually a special program titled Late Night With the Devil that reveals the unearthed, cursed reality of this particular taping of Delroy’s show, which also includes exclusive behind-the-scenes footage captured from the fateful night. Thus, the film plays out as an actual taping of a Seventies late-night talk show: Events are presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio and with the slight fuzzy glow reminiscent of a VHS tape playing on a CRT television. Jack is played in and out by his live band, and in between we watch him fill the time between commercial breaks.
That’s when the aesthetic shifts, and the style turns into a black-and-white vérité sense of behind-the-scenes commotion as the crew readies for the return from break — and wonders whether or not a real haunting is going on.
It’s totally gimmicky, but the sincere commitment to the conceit is what really makes this work. Don’t come to this looking for too many outright scares, as the film thrives off gallows humor and the gradual escalation of the familiar trappings of the late-night show slowly spiraling out of control and giving way to ever-so-spooky malevolent forces. It maintains a consistent and fantastic vibe if, like me, you enjoy the Halloween-store aesthetic of seasonal October television programming.
The tongue-in-cheek tone that it lands on helps with the fact that it feels indebted to horror progenitors; the initial qualities of Lilly’s possession just scream The Exorcist. This is more of a fun exercise with indulging in horror linchpins by working them into this specific concept than something meant to be taken as gravely serious.
With that in mind, it’s not surprising that the conclusion doesn’t quite land. The limits of the premise begin to get stretched past their breaking point, and it relies on a certain amount of emotional investment with Jack that’s hard to connect with when his trauma is so contained to what we learn over the course of a single episode taping, despite Dastmalchian’s excellent performance. Even still, Late Night With the Devil is able to mine plenty of effective and fun ideas out of its premise, and it works as a potent examination of the price of success.
A version of this review previously ran during SXSW Film 2023.
A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.
Richard Whittaker, Aug. 11, 2023
Richard Whittaker, July 21, 2023
Late Night With the Devil, Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes, David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi, Ingrid Torelli