Movie Review: Late Night with the Devil is simple, honest, disturbing, terrifying and sinisterly entertaining
Streaming platforms have had a great boom since what happened with SARS-CoV-2, the options to hire have been many and varied, and each one has specialized in the material they present, with Netflix being the most popular.
There are other more specialized and simpler platforms, their original productions may or may not be liked by locals and strangers, many of these are a pleasant surprise for their stories and how they have been presented, in this case, Shudder is an OTT video service on demand by American subscription that offers, among other things, series and films of horror, suspense and supernatural fiction, owned and operated by AMC Networks, they are the ones that have best known how to take advantage of the resource that this genre provides.
Its programming sponsors work from different countries, including the United States (Christmas Presence -2019), Germany (Party Hard, Die Young -2019), Mexico (Belzebuth (2019), Argentina (Terrified -2019), Indonesia (Impetigore – 2020), France (The Room -2020), Australia (The Marshes -2020), Canada (Bleed with Me -2021) and South Korea (The Wrath -2019) among others.
In 2024 they surprise us again with a production between Australia and the United States, Late Night with the Devil by directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes is much more than what may seem at first glance, a background that becomes increasingly more sinister.
What is the movie about?
Night Owls with Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) is a late-night talk and variety show that is about to have one of its most disturbing broadcasts, the events that occurred on Halloween night in 1977. Its popular host attempts to increase ratings by inviting a girl supposedly possessed by a demon, the revelations and events during this event will be sinister and terrifying for its audience.
The premiere of this film is not intended to pay tribute or show the dirt behind this type of variety program, what it intends to do is tell a series of events that happened due to doing unknown things that turn out to be very dangerous, a mockery of the broadcasts of this type today where it is more important to have a high rating that shows content that we might think is rehearsed and done on purpose to keep its audience captive for a couple of hours.
The film is set in 1977 and invents a program on a commercial television network in Chicago, something that aims to compete with others such as the one hosted by Johnny Carson, the program has been on the air for six seasons and its audience ratings have never been the best, consider that their content is boring and that they need to have something very spectacular to surpass the others and steal the attention of the public, a strategy will give them that opportunity and the consequences of this will be fatal and the much promised night of terror that they have promised will become something more than that.
The film’s prologue opens as a documentary that investigates and presents an inexplicable event that occurred on Halloween night in 1977, during the live broadcast of an episode of the sixth season of the late-night variety show “Night Owls with Jack Delroy” to increase the show’s ratings, decides that its strategy will be to make a special episode with an occult and paranormal theme on Halloween, special guests include self-proclaimed psychic and medium Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), skeptic and former magician Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), parapsychologist author June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and Lilly D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli).
During the broadcast and the back and forth about the subject and the integrity of this During Christou has a premonition about someone called “Minnie”, Jack surprised by this reveals that it was his affectionate way of calling his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig) who died due to cancer, after this vision, Christou suddenly falls ill and vomits a black liquid and is immediately rushed to the hospital during the commercial break, for Jack, things are going better than he expected in the segment following the cut, June tells them presents Lilly as the only survivor of a mass suicide committed by a satanic church that worshiped the demon Abraxas, despite June’s warnings about the possible consequences of interviewing her. Jack convinces her to conjure the demon whom the girl calls Mr. Wriggles, during another commercial break the team informs Jack that Christou died from a hemorrhage in the ambulance taking him to the Hospital.
It is to be expected that things will not go well at all and during June’s spell, Lilly is possessed by Mr. Wriggles levitating in her chair and making his presence manifest with glitches in the light of the study while this happens Carmichael challenges June subjecting Gus McConnell, Jack’s partner, to a demonstration of hypnotism, which causes everyone in the studio to see worms coming out of his body to the surprise of everyone present, the production team rewinds the recorded footage and demonstrates that this act has It has been an elaborate hallucination experienced by everyone in the studio, but the paranormal phenomena that occur during June’s spell appear unchanged and they deduce that there is no trick and that everything is real. Jack is completely horrified when he sees his dead wife behind him on tape, Carmichael accuses Jack of presenting what happens as an elaborate hoax, Lilly becomes possessed again, a beam of light comes from the ceiling and connects to her left hand, another beam comes out of a television monitor and connects to his right hand, his head opens from which a bright light emerges, using telekinesis he throws Jack against a wall and then mercilessly kills Gus, June and Carmichael.
At this point things are already out of control, the audience and the ratings are through the roof, and the executives think that all this has been an elaborate plot that is working extremely well and better than they thought, in the studio Jack is inexplicably transported to an alternate version of the show, to his worst nightmare reliving moments from the past before it is revealed to us that he has a connection with the demon that possesses Lilly and remembering that he already knew him during a ceremony at The Grove, then they reveal to us that has also been responsible for cancer that killed his wife in exchange for the sudden success and rise of his career and his show, a terrifying version of Madeline confronts Jack, blaming him for her death and asks him to end everything once and for all. that he has unleashed, this is how, using the ritual dagger of the ancient cult that has been used to make the spell, he stabs Madeleine to death, moments later he finds himself in an empty study where he sees with horror that he has stabbed Lilly to death on sight. from everyone and in a live broadcast. Disturbed and standing next to the lifeless bodies of his guests, he hears the police sirens arriving at the scene.
We are faced with a film that knows perfectly well what it wants to offer, that respects its own rules and those of the genre it occupies, and that, without being a marvel, manages to have a good development in its narrative, thereby generating the interest of the viewers until its end. , the proposal itself is honest and clean when presenting explicitly violent scenes
The story is simple and does not need to rely on subplots that go nowhere, what we are told here is clear and concise, and in addition to the graphic horror it has the exact dose of tension that is needed to recreate something like this, the script was written by Colin and Cameron Cairne, it has sudden twists and disturbing revelations towards its end and justifies each of the actions that the characters have, and if that were not enough it also presents us with what is behind these presenters and how the entertainment industry is managed in this type of variety and interview programs, revealing that not everything is as we think, that not all that glamor we see is entirely true.
This work is not completely perfect but it is very close to being so, the setting of the 70s is almost exact, the filmmakers took care of even the smallest detail to convince us as an audience that what we see is authentic, the cinematography and The filters they use make everything look old and even decadent in an era in which changes aimed to risk-taking things to a much larger medium and to another level when it comes to prime time.
The camera work, lighting, and photography stand out and perfectly accompany the plot, which, being modest, are spectacular in some shots. The directors know perfectly well how to coordinate their ideas so that everything looks more real and convincing, as does their makeup. costumes and the very few traditional special effects with a mix of AI for some shots, leaving aside the CGI to make all this something simple but with a very particular style that is what cinema needs today.
It could be perfect if the film didn’t trip over itself again and again insisting that what we see is something they found in footage that is gradually being built, although there is no room for a trite and boring moral message. what he wants when he wants without following a parameter established by American talk shows and variety shows in the 70s, it seems that at times they cannot agree between still shots and those with a camera in hand so the editing is fluid and more in line with the type of cinematography you need.
It is clear and direct in what it means, showing how far human ambition can go when wanting more than what you have, crossing the limits of everything established, and playing to know that you can handle any situation, no matter how unknown, transgressing with unknown topics. and dangerous can have fatal consequences, paranormal themes are what have had the most acceptance in this genre today, and fear of the unknown and easy scares are what they shamelessly make fun of here doing extremely well, each act has a consequence whether or not within a fantastic world or in the reality in which we live.
What is the cast of this movie?
The cast is made up of David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi, Ingrid Torelli, Rhys Auteri, Georgina Haig, and Josh Quong Tart, who are more than correct in their interpretations of each of their characters and understand perfectly well what we can expect from each of them in a film of this type.
Who composed the music?
The music composed by Glenn Richards and Roscoe James Irwin also stands out with its nostalgic and bombastic notes of this era, mixing them with something more current that grates in some scenes and can almost make our hair stand on end, a very worthy work that perfectly complements everything. the audiovisual that it presents to us.
It is worth mentioning that its propaganda and visual aesthetics advocate a lot for nostalgia, its poster and even the trailer remind us of those seventies horror films that had impeccable art, and images that invited us and made us have a genuine and authentic interest in what they We wanted to see something simple but attractive that leaves us with that mystery and wondering what this or that film will be about, something that recreates the decade very well, that stimulates without pretending to be something that it is not, in this we can say that it pays a well-deserved tribute to all those involved in the design of this art and concept.
In summary, Late Night with the Devil is not a film that boasts of being a great blockbuster or that has one of the most impressive casts in recent years, it stands out, especially in its simplicity and what it does, it does well and fulfills very well. well, the task of entertaining and earning a lot with very little, which is no small feat for an audience that has become more demanding over the years, a film that does not go unnoticed and that, from its title and propaganda, draws attention either by morbidity or the desire to want to see something new that has nothing to do with a remake or a reboot of something that was already successful, one more demonstration that ingenuity counts more when telling things than millions of dollars invested in a product that it necessarily has to work.
Very good for Shudder, which takes the risk of having different content and allows filmmakers and directors to present projects that could hardly reach movie theaters in other countries or that are discarded from a highly competitive industry that only seeks It’s staying current with any shit by pretending it’s the best thing we as an audience have ever seen.
Late Night with the Devil is now available on the Shudder platform.
