Review by C.J. Bunce
Versatile. That sums up Kansas City-area native David Dastmalchian. He’s been a part of every other film and TV genre series since a bit part in Early Edition in 2000, but you probably first noticed him as a thug for the Joker in The Dark Knight. His distinctive look can be found in Ray Donovan, Almost Human, CSI, Intruders, 12 Monkeys, Gotham, Twin Peaks, MacGyver, and The Flash. But he’s most recognizable from the Ant-Man movies, Dune, Suicide Squad, Oppenheimer, and Blade Runner 2029. Where you might have missed him is in a lesser known found-footage horror mockumentary from last year, Late Night with the Devil. If you’re a fan of movies accurately recreating a time and place in history, if you lived through the 1970s and found yourself glued to crappy late night TV more than once, and if you’re looking for a scary jolt with stops in gore territory this Halloween season, keep reading.
It isn’t a single component that makes Late Night with the Devil better than average B-movie horror fare. First, Dastmalchian is pristine–perfectly believable as a late night TV host in the year 1977. His clothes and style conjure a mix of the clothes of Bert Convy and the style and stride of Match Game’s Gene Rayburn, but Dastmalchian’s host has some Phil Donahue and Dick Cavett and more of that quiet, smoke-filled Tom Snyder presence. His late night host Jack Delroy could be a real personality plucked from the past. Movie audiences haven’t seen anyone inhabit a role this way since David Strathairn played Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck.
Viewers learn upfront that we’re about to watch footage of an actual episode of television that shocked the nation on October 31, 1977, an era where the inexplicable paranoid fear of satanic groups permeated rural and Bible belt America. The episode of Delroy’s show Night Owls promised viewers something they’d never seen before, supposedly showing the first demonic possession ever captured, and on live TV. Found footage in videotaped black and white showing the crew of the TV show backstage between the live broadcast is spliced into the segment.
Night Owls comes complete with a stunningly created set, with colors and styles only found in the late 1970s, an audience of hundreds of perfectly suited guests, and film quality that will have you believing this footage has sat quietly in a film container for the past several decades.
Along with Dastmalchian’s celebrity host (competing in the late night TV game against Johnny Carson) and the nostalgic set with its brown, yellow, and orange stripes is a script so cleverly written that you may find yourself in edge-of-your-seat, full-on cringe mode for the entire film. Writer-director brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes prove that they know 1970s horror as well as William Friedkin, Richard Donner, Stuart Rosenberg, Dan Curtis, Roman Polanski, Brian DePalma, and Stanley Kubrick. The Exorcist, Carrie, and The Omen can all be found sneaking around in this slowly percolating tale, from a creepy little girl who might be possessed, to a secret cult, and a B-level demon.
The 1970s didn’t have its own equivalent of Orson Welles’ infamous broadcasting a fake alien invasion over radio waves in 1938 via a War of the Worlds dramatization. Late Night with the Devil creates something like that for 1977.
The story ends up something straight out of the darkest corner of The Twilight Zone, if Rod Serling found himself at the center of an episode. This is one of those horror flicks that will stick with you afterward, so consider all the warning boxes ticked. The gore is presented in an entirely new way for a story like this–it’s actually quite brief but also in your face, the kind of blood and guts in the style of John Carpenter’s mutations in The Thing. It’s only there in one scene, with a stabbing scene, and a third scene featuring an otherworldly event something less than in The Exorcist but more on par with the opening of the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Holding back reservedly in the style of 1970s and 1980s conventions by the Cairnes Brothers–instead of full-on Clive Barker horror–adds to the authentic vibe of this movie.
Another element that makes this work is having Dastmalchian as the only remotely identifiable actor. He’s supported by Ian Bliss as Carmichael Haig, a skeptic trying to debunk two other guests on the show, Laura Gordon as Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, who brings her client Lilly (played by Ingrid Torelli) onto the show, after a clairvoyant, Fayssal Bassi’s Christou, appears… and leaves in a hurry. The TV show host’s requisite sidekick is played by the jovial Rhys Auteri.
Did I mention “creepy little girls”? That trope keeps coming back for more in the horror space, and Torelli’s disturbed youngster staring into the camera at you is certain to give you the heebie jeebies. The Cairnes Brothers will mess with viewers in the psychological sense, beginning with the long uncertainty of the first hour as to what is going on and what we expect to see. The authentic ’70s broadcasting details, like the mock TV show’s credits and the title cards and music between commercial breaks, truly seal the deal. Carrie, The Omen, The Exorcist, and Rosemary’s Baby had a strange cousin we didn’t know about.
Disturbing? Definitely. Scary? That depends on your threshold for 1970s horror tropes. It sort of sneaked its way into our attention this weekend. Again, this is one for those who aren’t afraid to dabble at 2 a.m. on a Friday night into the realm of Night Gallery or The Twilight Zone. Prime fun for Halloween scares, Late Night with the Devil is streaming now on Hulu.
