Taking a page from Ghostwatch and The WNUF Halloween Special, 2023’s Late Night With The Devil, written and directed by siblings Colin and Cameron Cairnes, centers on a live television program that aired on Halloween night.
This time around, the year is 1977. Night Owls, a late-night talk show hosted by Jack Delroy (David Dasmalchian), has been a perennial runner-up in the ratings since its debut six years earlier, finishing second to Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. Having recently returned to Night Owls following a long sabbatical, during which he mourned the death of his beloved wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig), Jack is hoping this Halloween special will finally catapult him to the number one spot on the ratings chart.
Joined as always by his trusty sidekick, Gus (Rhys Auteri), Jack has invited guests who specialize in the paranormal, including psychic Christou (Faysaal Bazzi); former magician-turned-skeptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss); and author / paranormal investigator June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who believes that her protégé, 13-year-old Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), the lone survivor of a demonic cult, is possessed by an evil entity.
Things go from bad to worse during the broadcast. Christou claims at one point to be receiving signals from a powerful spirit, and has a violent reaction to it. Then, with Carmichael Haig continually alienating the audience by way of his assertions that the supernatural is phony, Jack decides to up the ante, and convinces a reluctant June Ross-Mitchell to “contact” the demon living inside Lilly… live on the air!
The Night Owls sequences throughout Late Night With the Devil, where Jack and his guests are in front of the cameras, broadcasting to the entire country, are a hell of a lot of fun. Starting with Christou’s psychic readings of audience members (where his results are hit-and-miss) through to the terrifying moment when the demon inside Lilly bursts to the surface, we believe we are watching a live TV show.
Yet it’s what separates this film from others like it that really impressed me. Throughout the entireties of both Ghostwatch and The WNUF Halloween Special, never once do the filmmakers break format. At all times, what we are seeing in those two excellent films is exactly what anyone who watched the programs “live on TV” would have seen. In contrast, Late Night with the Devil also features “behind-the-scenes” footage (shot in B&W), supposedly captured during the commercial breaks. Throughout these asides, we eavesdrop on conversations between Jack and his longtime producer Leo (Josh Quong Tart) discussing the best way to maximize ratings, all as Gus and a few others in the crew express their concerns that things are getting out of hand.
By including these extra scenes (which are too polished to have actually been shot during the breaks), the Cairnes are essentially “stripping away” the realistic vibe that the earlier films went to great lengths to maintain, all in an effort to increase the tension (when Gus is volunteered to be the subject of a demonstration staged by Carmichael Haig late in the movie, the studio audience doesn’t know what we know: that Gus is already scared out of his mind!).
The Cairnes’ do a fine job recreating the look and feel of a ‘70s late-night talk show, right down to the cheap set pieces and gaudy clothes; and David Dasmalchian gives a solid performance as Jack Delroy, a guy just charismatic enough that we believe he’d be the host of his own show, yet at the same time mediocre enough to convince us he’ll never beat Carson in the ratings (Jack always goes for the obvious joke). Yet it’s the approach that Late Night with the Devil takes in telling its story, and its willingness to occasionally suspend the realism other movies of its ilk strive to preserve, that helps it stand apart from the rest.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
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