Review: ‘Late Night with the Devil’ transmits terrible frights

In 1992, Ghostwatch shocked the nation. Touted as an authentic broadcast, the film convinced UK viewers that what they saw — a terrifying investigation into the paranormal — was real. It ripped a permanent hole in found footage, cataclysmically tilting the genre on its axis, and things were never the same again. Late Night with the Devil vies for the same cultural shift. Retooling genre tropes (e.g. the possessed girl) lies at the film’s bile-spewing core, with co-directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes turning in one of the year’s most jolting efforts.

1977 emerges as the stylistic backdrop, amid the late-night talk show boom. Johnny Carson immediately comes to mind, as the film fully immerses you in the aesthetic and camp of the decade. David Dastmalchian plays the consummate Night Owls talk show host Jack Delroy, whose plummeting ratings lead him to mount a Halloween special. Among his guests are parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and a supposedly possessed young girl named Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), the centerpiece of the telecast. Known skeptic and former magician Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss) also appears on the show, a cynic whose jaded interruptions both indicate an unwillingness to accept the unknown and as a rebuttal against the then-ongoing Satanic Panic sweeping the nation.

The Cairnes Brothers meddle with perceptions about what is real and fantasy, tapping into the era’s zeitgeist and testing the audience’s trust, both literally in the movie and with viewers at home/in theaters. They hypnotize the audience with fantastical imagery, tricks of the mind, and playfully diabolical goings on. Situated as a “found footage” entry (i.e. a long-lost tape of the infamous telecast), Late Night with the Devil highlights what makes the format so mesmerizing. The scares come naturally, oozing on the screen like so much blood spurting from a fatal wound, and the characters deliver grounded performances that could very well be ripped from real life.

Dastmalchian is particularly enchanting, as he needles between fright and charm with acrobatic precision. He helms the ship, but things wouldn’t be quite as potent without Torelli’s enlightened star-turn. She commands attention as Lilly, even when the demon lurks in the shadows. Torelli plays things slightly aloof yet endearingly identifiable, so when the entity bubbles to the surface there’s a marked difference that makes the audience shudder in fear. As things descend into utter chaos, Torelli brilliantly excels in bringing the teeth-baring ghoul to life.

Late Night with the Devil arrives at a time when skepticism and misinformation run rampant in our culture. Carmichael remains absolute in his convictions that the paranormal is nothing more than fantasy and delusions, even when presented with clear evidence to the contrary. When another guest, a psychic named Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), sprays a thick, soupy black vomit mid-way through the telecast, Carmichael shrugs it off as a neat stage gimmick. Even when Lilly’s chair levitates off the floor, he makes an excuse that June is playing the audience for fools and implicitly injecting falsehoods into their brains.

With its attention to detail and convincing ’70s vibe, there arises an element that is disconcerting at best. Perhaps a minor quibble, yet a monumentally dangerous move, the use of AI for brief interstitials throughout the broadcast caused a firestorm of discourse. Such a decision, which came in 2022, a whole year before the conversation around the horrifying reality of AI exploded online, brings up moral complications about art and the creative process. Despite its brief use, the idea that an artist did not get the job is concerning, indicating that the steam locomotive that is AI is barreling straight for livelihoods. AI should be used to complement the artwork, not replace it entirely. Even dabbling in it can have severe ramifications.

Even so, Late Night with the Devil appears as among the year’s coolest and most inventive films. There’s no denying its eventual impact on horror storytelling and what found footage could look like in the future. Alongside other new releases like Frogman, The Blackwell Ghost 8, and They Are Watching, the subgenre is truly thriving in 2024, the year of our lord and savior.

Late Night with the Devil lands on Shudder this Friday (April 19).

Follow B-Sides & Badlands on our socials: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram