Late Night With the Devil (2024)
Late Night TV in the “Me Decade”
Late Night with the Devil is a funny, weird, and sometimes chilling look at the cutthroat world of 1970s late night talk shows. The film is framed as a documentary that incorporates behind the scenes footage of a variety show’s disastrous last episode.
It’s about a host who is tired of constantly being second banana to Johnny Carson in ratings. He is absolutely desperate to finally be number one. To achieve his quest, he is willing to do anything, even (cue the ominous music) sell his soul!
Jack (David Dastmalchian) is the host of a struggling ’70s late night talk show, Night Owls with Jack Delroy. He’s hosted the show for six seasons. Delroy takes a break after the death of his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig), who died of lung cancer despite not being a smoker.
After he returns, Jack is more focused than ever on making the show a success. Determined to increase his audience during sweeps month, he resorts to gimmicks like showcasing alleged paranormal phenomena.
On Halloween 1977, Jack invites some special guests to appear on the program: alleged psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazi) plans to wow the crowd with his abilities. Parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) is accompanied by Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a supposedly possessed young girl. Jack also brings in cocky debunker Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), who seems based on real life skeptic James Randi. Haig offers a $500k check to anyone who can prove their paranormal abilities.
After an opening monologue, Delroy starts the show with Christou, who uses cold reading techniques to deceive the live studio audience into believing that he can communicate with the dead. Then he brings on June and Lilly. The young girl terrifies the audience with her foul language, personal attacks, and demonic antics.
Carmichael objects, claiming that the routine is merely an act. But things quickly spin out of control and a deadly force threatens to destroy everything that Jack has worked for.
a Fresh Take on an old idea
Late Night with the Devil takes on the demonic possession subgenre and finds a unique spin. That’s not easy to do. There have been countless possession movies since the success of The Exorcist in 1973, but this is the first to take place on a retro talk show.
Related: The Top 13 Horror Subgenres
The movie’s standout performance belongs to Dastmalchian. He must have studied real-life television hosts to emulate their line delivery and body language. He is essentially playing two characters. Dastmalchian is able to change gears between Delroy’s “likeable talk show host” persona and his darker, sleazier private side.
The directors, the Cairnes brothers, deserve credit for having the guts to try something new, instead of adding another addition to the conventional “innocent child gets possessed by evil” storyline. Their film does a great job imitating the look of real 1970s variety shows.
It’s obvious that a tremendous amount of effort was devoted to the film’s production design. If it wasn’t for the HD picture quality, one could almost believe that this movie features actual footage from the ’70s.
Rating
Late Night with the Devil is an entertaining and occasionally creepy film that does a remarkable job capturing the aesthetic of actual 70s television. It is one of the most original found footage movies of the past decade.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 8
