‘Late Night With the Devil’ Review #2
Stars: David Dastmalchian, Michael Ironside, Georgina Haig, Fayssal Bazzi, Ian Bliss, Rhys Auteri, Laura Gordon, Ingrid Torelli | Written and Directed by Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes
A live television broadcast goes horribly wrong in this formidably creepy found footage horror, written and directed by Australian brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes. Anchored by a terrific lead turn from perennial character actor David Dastmalchian, it’s a cult movie waiting to happen.
Taking a page from British TV’s classic Ghostwatch, but adding a period setting, Late Night With the Devil purports to be the master tapes of a disastrous live TV recording from Halloween 1977, in which a guest on the talk show Night Owls with Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian) attempted to commune with the Devil, live on air, in a bid to gain ratings during Sweeps Week.
Naturally, there’s a build-up before the main event. Early guests on Night Owls’ spooky Halloween special include psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), who vomits and later dies offscreen, followed by stage magician-turned-professional debunker Carmichael Hunt (Ian Bliss). Then Delroy brings on the main event, parapsychologist and author Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), together with Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a former possessee who was the sole survivor of her Satanic church’s mass suicide and has since become Ross-Mitchell’s patient, as well as the subject of her book, “Conversations with the Devil”.
The script, which won a Best Screenplay award at the Sitges Film Festival, does a terrific job of layering in important-for-later background information, such as the fact that Delroy is a member of a shady-sounding Men Only club called The Grove, the fact that his glamorous wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig) recently died of lung cancer, or the fact that he’s sick of always being second in the ratings to Johnny Carson. To that end, the seeds are subtly sown for the suggestion of a Faustian pact of some sort, as the audience waits for the Devil to make his inevitable titular appearance.
Dastmalchian is perfectly cast as Delroy, his previous status as a not-quite-leading-man adding a delicious little dash of authenticity to his ambitious and hungry host. There’s also great support from Rhys Auteri as his increasingly nervous sidekick, while Ingrid Torelli does a convincingly creepy job of what could easily have been an overly clichéd role as the possessed girl.
The Cairnes’ control of pace and tone is impressive throughout, expertly building tension and creating an increasingly spooky atmosphere, while injecting effective notes of jet-black humour. On top of that, the production design work by Otello Stolfo beautifully encapsulates tacky 1970s TV sets, in conjunction with Stephanie Hooke’s costumes and Matthew Temple’s cinematography.
Without giving too much away, Late Night With the Devil also deserves credit for its superb effects work (leaving aside the recent controversy over the use of three AI-generated inserts), particularly on such a low-budget production. It’s fair to say that the chilling climax delivers a few surprises on that score, ensuring audiences leave the cinema suitably shaken up.
**** 4/5
Late Night With the Devil is in cinemas now from Vertigo Releasing.
