Movie Review: Late Night with the Devil

It’s 1977 and late-night host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) is struggling in the ratings against Johnny Carson. His wife has recently passed away and he’s been somewhat adrift since leading his show to drop in quality since. Hoping to stave off cancellation, he and his producer Leo (Josh Quong Tart) have cooked up a special Halloween episode full of guests with purported ties to the supernatural. After a documentary style introduction, Late Night with the Devil is presented as a recording of said episode in its entirety, with additional behind the scenes footage added during the commercial breaks, a conceit that works remarkably well.

After a few amusingly cheesy jokes and some banter with his beleaguered sidekick Gus (Rhys Auteri), he brings on first guest Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) who claims to be psychic. It is during his demonstration that the first signs that something may be amiss appear, but the show carries on anyway. Second guest Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss) is an ex-magician who now tries to debunk people’s claims of extraordinary gifts, and he is only all too eager to eviscerate Christou’s act, but Delroy remains convinced there is something to it. It is his third guests that he is truly excited about however: parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and the subject of her new book, Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a young girl who claims to be possessed by a demon. The pair is supposed to allow the demon to speak briefly but, claiming that Lilly’s behavior has been unusually erratic lately, June is hesitant to go forward with the plan. But it wouldn’t be a horror movie if she didn’t ultimately relent and so she does, with predictably disastrous results.

Those used to the way modern genre movies open up with a scare and then relentlessly hammer audiences over the head with frequent set pieces may have to adjust to this film’s somewhat more sedate pacing. Almost nothing supernatural occurs for the first hour, instead we get a remarkably convincing recreation of a retro talk show. That doesn’t mean the movie drags, far from it. Knowing that things are not going to go well for those involved lends a heightened level of suspense to these more ordinary moments, and the cast truly give the material their all and are consistently engaging to watch, with Dastmalchian especially nailing his performance as a charming man who will do seemingly anything for fame.

Writing and directing duo Cameron and Colin Cairnes really capture the essence of the time period, with the whole production feeling like it genuinely could be from the 70s. They even get a few decent laughs in, something most attempts at a behind-the-scenes look at comedy programming typically fail at. If there is one flaw with Late Night with the Devil it’s that it never manages to feel truly frightening, though the increasingly insane ending is highly entertaining. It’s a fun little movie that’s been made with a lot of care that most viewers should be able to enjoy without risk of having any nightmares. ★★★★