Stay Up Late To Watch This Tight Frightener
Late Night with the Devil operates on a fairly simple premise: Jack Delroy messes around and finds out. It’s Halloween and Jack Delroy (played divinely by David Dastmalchian) is struggling with his 1970s-set late night talk show. In the deft opening narration, we learn that Jack’s show is successful, but he’s always losing the number one spot to Johnny Carson. He has also had his share of personal tragedies — his wife had died just a year prior. Ever the consummate professional, though, Jack gets on with the show.
The episode we see is intercut with behind-the-scenes pieces, letting us experience the inner machinations of the show Night Owls with Jack Delroy. The episode begins with some late-night banter between Jack and Gus, his announcer and the butt of most of the jokes. Gus (Rhys Auteri) is uncomfortable with the occult theme of the Halloween episode and continually tries to speak with Jack and production about this but is ignored. The episode starts fairly tame with Cristou (Fayssal Bazzi), a medium, who stumbles initially but is able to charm the audience by connecting with an audience member’s deceased son. They also bring out a skeptic, Carmichael (Ian Bliss), to challenge Cristou. Things start to go wrong almost immediately here.
After some drama with Cristou and Carmichael they pivot to the big get of the night, June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), parapsychologist, and her subject Lilly. Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) has survived a demonic cult and a mass suicide due to divine or perhaps demonic intervention. Jack initially has them on for one segment but quickly pressures June into a second, asking the demon inside this little girl to be a guest on the show. Things continue to go wrong, however, but the audience is eating it up. Things get darker, scarier, but the perpetual motion machine has started and at this point the production is powerless to stop it.
This film is tightly scripted and exceedingly well acted. There are no slackers in the cast, including the audience members. It’s only 93 minutes long, so there is no fat to trim. It maintains a razor’s edge tension for the duration and masters subtly unsettling vibes. The sets and costumes look great and it’s mostly in 4:3 aspect ratio. There are very few gross moments but they are expertly deployed. There are layers to every shot that kept grabbing my attention. It left me with questions, and feeling introspective.
What’s your soul worth? What will you sacrifice?
These are the questions that seem to drive Late Night with the Devil. I think this is particularly interesting given that the movie producers chose to sacrifice human artists in an attempt to be more successful. While I feel this has been discoursed to death I think it’s important to note that this film uses AI art. This film was made before the strikes of 2023 and technically doesn’t violate any new agreements around it but I still think it’s lazy and since it’s impossible to have AI art without theft I think it’s fairly gross to use it in your movie. I personally wouldn’t support it in theaters.
This is a great movie but catch it on streaming. Coming to Shudder on April 19. I give Late Night with the Devil (IFC Films, Shudder; R; 93 minutes) a 4 out of 5.
