There’s a certain quality that select horror movies can conjure, something with a high degree of difficulty that gets even higher when said horror movie is trying to evoke a very specific time and place. We’ve seen it with found footage films like The Blair Witch Project, films about found footage like Sinister, and even flat-out works of historical fiction like The Witch. It’s hard to identify, but you know it when it hits you: The sense that what you’re watching really happened, and you were never meant to see it.
How exactly you achieve this sense of forbidden viewing is hard to pin down, which makes it all the more magical when the feeling connects, when an audience member sinks deep into the immersive experience of the film and gasps and screams right along with the characters. Sometimes it’s a matter of production design, or photography, or simple conceptual brilliance. Sometimes it’s all three and more. Through a combination of these factors, and a ferocious, magnetic lead performance by David Dastmalchian, Late Night With The Devil achieves that rare feat of feeling like something we were never supposed to see. But once we’ve seen it, we can’t look away.
Dastmalchian is Jack Delroy, a 1970s late-night host who’s spent the last six years of his life chasing Johnny Carson in the ratings. His show, Night Owls With Jack Delroy, has always been popular, but it’s never claimed the top slot, something that wears on Jack despite success, stability, and a happy home life. When cancer claims his wife, Jack’s personal and professional lives stumble simultaneously, putting his show in peril, and leaving him with one last chance to stay relevant with a Sweeps Week show that just so happens to be a live Halloween broadcast.
Late Night With The Devil is presented, with the help of a brief documentary-style introduction, as the “raw footage” from that broadcast, complete with behind-the-scenes cameras capturing the action during commercial breaks. That means directors and writers Colin and Cameron Cairnes have to capture every detail of what looks and feels like a real 1970s talk show, then slowly turn up the horror dial until the audience is trapped in a nightmare.
And that is where the film immediately and fantastically succeeds, with the help of cinematographer Matthew Temple, production designer Otello Stolfo, and costume designer Stephanie Hooke. Everything about Night Owls, from the sets to the bumpers between segments to Delroy’s wardrobe, conjures up the feeling of a real lost piece of ’70s TV arcana, a show that falls somewhere between Carson and Dick Cavett and, therefore, a show that could easily play host to any number of wild moments which would eventually circulate across YouTube and darker corners of the web for all eternity. If you’ve ever seen those clips of Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer arguing on Cavett, or really any number of Andy Kaufman’s combative, abrasive late-night bits, you’ll understand. It doesn’t matter that you probably recognize Dastmalchian from Dune or The Suicide Squad or any number of other roles. Within minutes, you’re immersed in the vibe of the show.
Delroy sets the stage for what viewers should expect to see on the footage from this particular lost Halloween night in 1977: interviews with a spirit medium (Fayssal Bazzi), a stuck-up skeptic (Ian Bliss), a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon), and the girl (Ingrid Torelli) she claims is possessed by a demon. Beyond that, we’re not going to talk any more about the plot, because it’s worth it to preserve not just what happens, but how well the Cairneses play with the tension of any given moment within the larger arc of this story. The film expertly manipulates everything from the awkward interactions between the medium and the studio audience, to the terse standoffs between the skeptic and, well, everyone else on the show, to the moment when it becomes quite clear what Jack is really after, why this particular assemblage of people has been brought together on this night. The buildup is absolutely delicious, but the payoff is arguably even more spectacular, a horror jolt that never feels out of place within the confines of the concept, but retains a certain grandiosity that’ll have genre fans practically cheering.
All of this is anchored, with the sharpness and resolve of a seasoned character actor, by Dastmalchian, who commands the entire Night Owls stage even when surrounded by other performers who are more than a match for the material. His mastery of the slightest details of Jack Delroy as a character, from the way he clasps his hands to the way he plays to the camera like a seasoned host, reveals that he’s done his homework—but then Dasmalchian goes even deeper and darker. His face is a constant blend of pain, fear, earnestness, and genuine longing for some depth that Jack himself might never fully understand. If the film itself succeeds in creating a sense that we’re watching forbidden footage, then Dastmalchian succeeds in portraying a creator who’s very aware, somewhere deep down in those expressive, bittersweet eyes, that he’s changing the world for good or ill with this one night of television. It’s a remarkable performance that will go down as one of the best in the entire horror genre.
But it’s not all Dastmalchian’s show. Virtually everything about Late Night With The Devil works, from its sets to its costumes to its casting to its impeccable sound design. It’s a gem on every level, and it’s already a contender for the best new horror film of 2024.
Late Night With The Devil premieres in theaters March 22 and hits Shudder April 19