Late Night With the Devil Is a Retro, Occult-y Good Time

Just when you think found-footage horror has exhausted its last avenue for something creative and new, a movie like Late Night With the Devil comes along. Styled as a Halloween episode of a 1970s talk show that goes way off the rails, it perfectly captures the aesthetic of the era—as well as its burgeoning fascination with all things occult.

(But first, an important note: if you learned about this movie thanks to its use of AI art, which has been causing a stir online, you can more about that in this Variety piece, in which the filmmakers responded with a statement that reads in part: “In conjunction with our amazing graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the ‘70s aesthetic we had always imagined, we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.” They are indeed so briefly used I didn’t even notice that the art was AI-generated while I was watching the film—but if that’s something you don’t want to support, it’s good to have that information ahead of time.)

Long a “that guy” supporting actor (The Boogeyman, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Oppenheimer, The Suicide Squad), David Dastmalchian steps into the lead (rocking sideburns and a polyester beige suite) as Jack Delroy, host of late-night syndicated talk show Night Owls. He’s found some success, but “Mr. Midnight” hasn’t been able to emerge from Johnny Carson’s shadow—and after several years on the air, he’s desperate to boost his sagging ratings. That’s the context we get from Late Night With the Devil’s documentary-style opening, which then rolls right into the “recently discovered master tape” of the infamous episode, including behind-the-scenes footage captured during commercial breaks.

Naturally, it being Halloween, Delroy and his team—producer Leo (Josh Quong Tart) and sidekick/announcer Gus (Rhys Auteri)—cook up a special they hope will delight and maybe frighten viewers. Jack’s guests include a famous medium (Fayssal Bazzi) who purports to be able to speak to the dead; a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) and the young cult survivor (Ingrid Torrelli) who’s the subject of her new book, the ominously titled Conversations With the Devil; and a stage magician turned skeptic (Ian Bliss) who’s there to question everything, and is quite clearly inspired by real-life debunker James Randi. Plus: music, jokes, a costume contest, mass hypnosis, and… demons unleashed?

Sibling writing-directing duo Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes did their research—you can tell many hours of 1970s talk shows were consumed as part of their research process, and as a result Late Night With the Devil feels eerily authentic. The script also does a good job sprinkling clues to the movie’s last-act meltdown throughout. You know from the start that “a live TV event that shocked a nation” (hat-tip to infamous British mockumentary Ghostwatch) is about to happen, but the build-up is nearly as fun as the chaos when it arrives.

Late Night With the Devil hits theaters March 22; it arrives on Shudder April 19.

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