PRESENTED as a documentary with aired and unaired footage shot on Halloween in 1977, Late Night with the Devil follows Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), a talk show host of the American late-night show Night Owls with Jack Delroy.
The documentary opens with an introduction into Delroy’s history as a talk show host, weaving a possible supernatural tie with his visits to The Grove, a private gathering of the rich and elite in the middle of a jungle, along with his wife’s sudden death from lung cancer despite being a non-smoker.
Delroy subsequently retreats from the public eye and the show, which causes Night Owls to dip in television popularity due to all the competition. After he returns, the show struggles to regain viewership.
For Halloween, Night Owls puts together an ensemble of guests such as the psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) and magician and paranormal sceptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss). For the main draw, which he hopes will make the show popular again, Delroy arranges for the appearance of parapsychologist June Ross (Laura Gordon) and Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a survivor of a satanic cult mass suicide.
The audience then goes into the Halloween episode knowing that Delroy is desperate and may do anything for the episode to be a hit.
Hellish performance and presentation
The real fun behind Late Night is how it has one foot in fiction and the other in reality.
By basing its premise on late-night shows that mimic popular real world shows like Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Late Night with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and so on, the film is able to go hog wild with its presentation, and as a period film of sorts, the retro 70s aesthetics is the cherry on top that makes the film pop visually and sonically.
It was also great to see Dastmalchian knocking it out of the park as the film’s lead actor. He has traditionally only played minor characters in big films, like Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer.
Unfortunately, the film only goes in one direction that everyone is familiar with, because despite the 1977 setting, Late Night does not add anything new with its demonic angle.
Not quite infernal
Among the many things that made the 80s infamous was the “satanic panic” hysteria that was being experienced by American parents and amplified by the media.
Late Night covers this aspect in a five minute sequence about Lilly, and then completely abandons the idea, even when the girl gets possessed. The writing being disappointing and the carnage being reigned in dulls the impact of the film’s premise.
Additionally, Late Night has a little controversy attached to its release, as the brothers who directed the film have admitted that they used artificial intelligence (AI) during its production.
The AI images appear three times in the film, used as interstitials for commercial breaks. Fairly simple images, it does not make sense why Cameron and Colin Cairnes did not employ a human graphic artist to do these.
If AI was secretly used more, Late Night’s horror of a demon wreaking havoc on a late-night show would be as equally terrifying as AI taking over the jobs of creatives.
Late Night with the Devil is currently streaming on Shudder.
