Shudder Saturday: Late Night With The Devil (2023)

A lot has been said already about Late Night With The Devil, most of it hugely positive, and I am unlikely to add anything new to the conversation. I've never let that stop me before though, and here's my own full review of the film. Those not wanting to read too much more about it may be satisfied with this summary: "it's very good, but it's no Ghostwatch".

Presented as a previously-unseen final episode of a late '70s talk show, viewers are given a quick history of TV host Jack Delroy (Dabid Dastmalchian). The ratings for his show have been falling, he has suffered the loss of his wife, Madeleine (Georgina Haig), to cancer, and it starts to look more and more unlikely that he's nearing the end of his career. Or, at the very least, nearing the end of this phase of his career. Jack puts on a brave face though, and he thinks they may get some big ratings with an occult-themed episode for Halloween. Joined by his sidekick, Gus (Rhys Auteri), Jack is looking to impress the audience with a medium, Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a former-magician-turned-debunker, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), and a parapsychologist (June Ross-Mitchell, played by Laura Gordon) who is bringing along a young, supposedly possessed, girl named Lily (Ingrid Torelli). There should also be time for a musical guest to cheer everyone up at the end of the spookiness. It's not long until things start getting a bit strange, and we see more of the impact of that strangeness during moments that were filmed during the ad breaks as Jack and the crew try to keep everything running smoothly.

Co-written and co-directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes, two brothers who already have a handful of movie and TV/short credits to their names, there's no denying that Late Night With The Devil gets a lot right, particularly when it comes to the casting. I just didn't see the authenticity and attention to detail that others have responded to. There's too little confidence being displayed, although this "episode" was filmed at a time when the host was showing his vulnerability and putting his fate in the hands of his viewership, there are too many times when it feels as if the programmers would cut away from everything and potentially take the whole thing off-air sharp, and there is an end sequence that discards the whole "rediscovered episode" format to allow the Cairnes brothers to show us some unsettling and fantastical sights. I didn't mind being shown the escalating tensions during the apparent ad breaks, but the last 5-10 minutes slightly soured me on this. If you have an idea that works best in a certain format then, dammit, you need to work as hard as you can to ensure that you can deliver everything you need to deliver IN that format.

I could be way off here, especially when others have complimented the film for how accurately it recreates that era of late-night TV chat show, but nothing drew me in to a world that I thought was realistic. It almost felt like a castelet, albeit a good one, with the cast all being unwitting puppets in a show destined to end in a way that cuts their strings, one way or another.

Dastmalchian is brilliant though, and I will be delighted if this lead role helps him receive the kind of offers he should have been inundated with before now. He's just the right mix of polish and awkwardness, the host striving to overcome any obstacle in the way of presenting a show that he hopes will put him back near the top of the TV ratings, and he delivers a performance that gives us a fully-rounded and brilliantly-nuanced lead character to root for. Auteri is also very good, playing the typical sidekick we've seen many times in this TV show format. Bazzi feels like a bit of comedy relief, but his appearance sets some interesting wheels in motion, and Bliss is enjoyably arrogant and sceptical as he offers up explanations for the "inexplicable". Gordon is given the least to do, even less than Haig (in some ways), but does well, as does the latter, and Torelli is quite perfect as Lily, constantly intriguing and unnerving in a way that stems from the subtlety and natural manner of her performance.

I wouldn't ever call this a bad film. It's good, and most people seem to think that it's very good, but that lack of authenticity spoils it for me, as does that complete turn away from the format at the very end of the film. Very few people, if any, will agree with me, and many think that it absolutely nails the look and feel it is going for, which makes me think that it's maybe my British lens not recognising a very specific American time and place, but it's all different strokes for different folks, eh. Considering what it gets right, and considering how many others love it, I would still recommend this to horror fans. I would just acknowledge that some people may, like myself, end up underwhelmed by it.

6/10

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