Film of the Week: Late Night with the Devil

The Satanic Panic of the 70s was an underlying symptom of the social and political upheaval of the era, as America's transition from the New Deal era to that of the neoliberal, centrist political system began in full force. The shining smiley-face vision of America had fully melted away, the era of "love thy neighbor" was dead, in its place was a cultural attitude of paranoia. And with this paranoia came the opportunity for those who were callous enough to exploit attitudes and powers beyond their control.

The exploiters are the focus of Late Night with the Devil, the indie horror film framed as a collection of footage from the infamous Halloween episode of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, a 70s late show and apparent rival to the likes of Johnny Carson. A mix of Ghostwatch (a real-time broadcast beset by the supernatural) and Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (frequent behind-the-scenes footage that depicts the slow, steady breakdown of its participants), Late Night is all about perceptions of what is real and what is not and how people are willing to exploit that for fame, fortune, or a chance to get their name out. For the most part, it works, crafting a unique horror experience that compels its viewers, even as it goes off the rails slightly in its climax. Much of the credit for this is the excellent costume and set design, which faithfully recreates the look of the era, from the sliding door sets to the garish sideburns and bowlcuts of its various guests. It makes the show, largely, feel lived in, something that audiences have watched for years rather than just a cheap imitation. 

The 70s talk show aesthetic is so faithfully recreated that the Cairnes siblings willingness to subvert and distort it makes it feel like a jarring intrusion on what should be a safe space, perpetually ratcheting up tension as the show progresses closer and closer to its climax. Of course, this also makes the film's usage of AI art even more inexplicable, a lazy shortcut that breaks immersion every time it "graces" the screen and reflects poorly in an era when artists more than ever need solidarity.

The cast, similarly, is immensely game, playing a mixture of skeptics, charlatans, and professionals confronted with a horror that, if real, threatens to spiral beyond their control. David Dastmalchian in particular carries it, selling Delroy as an affable, troubled figure whose true nature, a mix of grief and desperation, bubbles up more and more with every passing minute. It's a character whose motivations are more implied than truly shown, and he sells it well, playing with audience perception and sympathy even as the "truth" is revealed.

It's the idea of perception and how to weaponize it that makes the film so effective. It's characters, intentionally, are vaguely written, their exact motivations and relationships, such as Delroy's relationship with June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), the caretaker/psychiatrist of Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), or the exact circumstances of his apparent Faustian bargan for fame and fortune, are left up to hints and audience interpetation. Effectively, it leaves us as viewers to the show, only lucky enough to see what they show us. This playing with the medium helps keep a sense of immersion, from the strange audio/visual glitches throughout to a particularly memorable sequence in which the audience witnesses a hypnosis, only to in turn be hypnotized themselves.

Even a move that should be immersion-breaking—a shift to a modern, high-definition style during the film's climax—doesn't break things too much. It's jarring, but in the chaos of the film's final twenty minutes, a delightfully practical bloodbath where the tightrope of tension and uncertainty finally snaps, it adds to the overwhelming feeling of witnessing something that has gone completely out of control. It's this creativity, this "throw at the wall and see what it sticks" mentality, that makes Late Night with the Devil such a treat and a worthy follow-up to its clear influences.