Late Night with the Devil
What does it take to be number 1?
Laura Gordon, Ingrid Torelli, David Dastmalchian, and Ian Bliss smile for the camera in the found-footage horror movie Late Night with the Devil.
Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) has one dream: To beat Johnny Carson. The host of 1970s late-night show Night Owls, Jack has come close on a few occasions to toppling the ratings giant, but even putting his dying wife on the show didn’t do the trick.
Once his wife died, Jack got more obsessed with the idea of beating Carson. He stooped to trashy attention-getting stunts, and instead of inflating the ratings, the show began to tank.
Now, in 1977, with his show on the chopping block, Jack decides to attempt one last ratings-grabbing episode. On Halloween night, the show went live, promising audiences an occult experience unlike anything they’d ever seen. The results traumatized a nation.
Using the tapes from that night as well as some behind-the-scenes footage, Late Night with the Devil hopes to piece together just what went wrong. Did Jack’s quest to kill The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson really unleash evil? Or is the reputation around Night Owls just mass hysteria?
While the found footage genre has been a bit overused in recent horror films, Late Night with the Devil manages to find creative ways to subvert the art form. Writers/directors/brothers Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes take pains to give the film the feel of a 70s broadcast. The images are all flat and sepia-tinted, like an aged VHS tape you’d find abandoned in your parents’ basement. It even has the classic TV aspect ratio of 4:3, so don’t adjust your flatscreen when the movie starts playing and everything looks square.
The behind-the-scenes footage is rendered on black-and-white film, which switches the aspect ratio back to a traditional rectangular 16:9. And while one could argue that the backstage feed is not something that would have happened on a 70s variety show, the footage does offer some interesting character moments and plot development. The switch is subtle, but also a clever little detail for the production.
For the Cairnes brothers, the devil is truly in the details. Every inch of the set and wardrobe is a flashback to the 1970s, from the yellow-red-brown stripes to the purple pants suits. Jack’s right-hand man Gus (Rhys Auteri) even does ad reads at the commercial break which hilariously adlibbed after a segment goes off the rails. It’s that attention to the period that truly sells this film as some sort of cursed relic from a bygone era.
The meticulous set design is also why it’s disappointing to know that the Cairnes brothers used AI to generate the bumper images seen throughout the movie. It may have been an easy way to get cheap art, but it still feels like a poor choice considering how hard writers and actors fought to keep AI from replacing their work.
Still, Late Night with the Devil delivers when it comes to its non-AI-generated components. Character actor and member of the Hey, It’s That Guy Club, David Dastmalchian delivers as the desperate to succeed Jack. As a host, Jack is used to sounding and looking earnest when he’s talking to people, but it’s easy to see how Jack uses this quality to manipulate people as well. He’s a man who has given up just about everything for fame and is coming to the realization that it still might not be enough. Because of that, he’s determined to make a splash with his live show, even if things seem to be going off the rails.
Rounding out a great ensemble are Ingrid Torelli and Ian Bliss. Torelli plays a girl who’s suffering from “psychic infestation” and is genuinely unnerving as she stares down the camera with a frozen smile. Bliss plays a skeptic brought on to debunk and expose Torelli and the other acts scheduled to perform. While Torelli is all eerie stillness, Bliss is a scoffing sarcastic jerk, eager to show off for the cameras. It’s an interesting dynamic and one that helps speed the spiraling show into disaster.
Like most found footage films, there are a few lapses, some things the cameras couldn’t have possibly caught and some things that might not have been technologically possible. Picture-in-picture broadcasting was developed for the 1976 Summer Olympics, but it’s doubtful the second-best late-night show on television would have such a new technology in October of 1977. But it’s easy to forgive a few plot liberties when the product is genuinely entertaining and chilling.
For those in the market for a found-footage horror flick with some truly shocking gore and twists, Late Night with the Devil is well worth the ticket. It’s rare to get such a thoughtful meditation on fame and faith, making this movie something special, even if Jack never did beat Johnny Carson.
Verdict: Clever and creepy, Late Night with the Devil is one show you don’t want to miss.
Late Night with the Devil is rated R and available in theaters March 22.
