Review: Late Night with the Devil

Directors:  Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes

Stars:  David Dastmalchian, Ian Bliss, Laura Gordon

There’s a dark voyeurism and complex set of impulses tied into our relationship with celebrities and public figures; people we quickly and collectively dehumanise for our own entertainment. Perhaps it comes from watching too much television, littering our waking worlds with as many fantasies as realities, but this same darker intent is at its most rabid when we’re watching someone fail. When there are genuine stakes.

Australian filmmakers Cameron and Colin Cairnes offer us a savvy, attention-grabbing little horror picture this month that manages to scrutinise both sides of these unhealthy transactions; our own hunger for things to go wrong, but also the psychologically draining act of walking a high wire for the public, of being the one in the spotlight. Of being the monkey dancing.

Presented in a manner that merges found footage and mockumentary, Late Night with the Devil opens with Michael Ironside narrating some context. Framing the entire movie as a late night exposé allows an efficient and immediately forgivable method of dumping a majority of the movie’s exposition in one. It’s a smart choice.

We’re introduced to ’70s talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), whose Night Owls show spent the better part of the decade struggling in a ratings war with his more successful competitors. Having lost his wife Madeline (Georgina Haig) in a rather public health spiral and with his contract expiring, Jack turned to desperate measures come the 1977 Halloween sweeps to secure his audience share, inviting the possessed survivor of a cult massacre – 13 year old Lilly D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli) – onto the show, under the supervision of his new flame Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon).

The stage is set – literally – for the tape of that night’s broadcast to run.

Horror aficionados – particularly those of a British or Anglophile bent – may well be versed in a deeply improbable BBC stunt that occurred one Halloween in the early ’90s, in which several recognised and trusted TV presenters took part in a live ghostbusting event during primetime, famously fooling a good portion of its audience into thinking it was a legitimate show as opposed to an elaborate – and deliciously dry – hoax. Ghostwatch went on to become a cult curio and a fondly recalled part of a lineage that goes back – at least – to Orson Welles’ notorious 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

Late Night with the Devil is imbued with much the same spirit, splicing such sensibilities with something lightly comedic or tongue-in-cheek. Presented by Shudder, it’s also within passing distance of a recent V/H/S segment – Flying Lotus’ anarchic “Ozzy’s Dungeon” from V/H/S/99 – which depicted a kids’ TV gameshow descending into grisly chaos.

With a full feature (or should that be episode) running time to play with, the Cairnes wisely choose to bed us down in the ‘reality’ of the show before they start playing their pranks, and the decision pays dividends. Dastmalchian has been a noted character actor presence for some years now. He’s wonderful here as Jack Delroy, an amiable guy cooking under the pressure of studio lights for the upteenth time, trying to hold a reputation together with a good natured smile that shows the tiniest signs of slipping. For both character and actor it’s the performance of his career so far. His own dialled-back Knowing Me, Knowing You. You want to root for Delroy, even as you suspect he may be complicit in the theatrics to come.

Surrounding him, the manifestation of his imagined talk show Night Owls are a dream of gaudy ’70s colour schemes, wet-lettuce gags and strained bonhomie. Rhys Auteri is a frequent delight as Delroy’s band conductor and chief co-host Gus, almost upstaged by Delroy’s chief guest and foil; moustache-twirling professional sceptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss). A former stage magician turned hack cynic, Carmichael represents a possible trajectory for Delroy himself, and the projection isn’t flattering.

Bedding down in the amiable chat of Night Owls asks patience of the audience as we flit between awkward segments and plentiful ad breaks (where we cut, smartly, to ‘behind the scenes’ footage delineated in black and white). The Cairnes appreciate that this time spent needs to be engaging and immersive in and of itself. It is. An early close encounter and cut-to-commercial accident involving celebrity mystic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) should both placate the impatient and also key the seasoned audience into the eventual tone here. When it goes for it, Late Night with the Devil is aiming for off-kilter schlock, mixing practical effects with VFX to engage in pyrotechnics reminiscent of the era in which it is set. The sensibilities of V/H/S kindle themselves once more then it comes to the tone of the horror elements here. Late Night with the Devil is comfortable deliberately embracing the wacky. If only for occasional saucy clinches.

But it all rests on a handful of performances and everyone does their bit to sell it. The find of the evening might be young Torelli as Lilly, who manages to unnerve even before Delroy orchestrates some Exorcist-style shenanigans with the lights down. She’ll be in some flaccid Blumhouse boo-factory before the end of next year I’m sure. But the true showcase is for the aforementioned and praised Dastmalchian, who also takes an exec. producer credit. Hopefully Late Night with the Devil will provide him the spotlight he’s long deserved, and perhaps that underdog mentality plays into and enhances what he brings to Jack Delroy? Who’s to say…

The end of the movie takes a big risk, breaking ranks with the formal beats that have been drummed into the viewer through repetition. After the show is effectively over, we continue, changing aspect ratio and film stock, pursuing a resolution for Delroy that would not have been possible within the conceit of a taped broadcast. It’s a little bit of an unmooring, and the closest Late Night with the Devil comes to losing us. But, ultimately, its the brisk thematic and emotional crescendo that the piece needs. It feels, strangely, like the film-within-a-film at the end of The Souvenir Part II. Not, perhaps, what the audience within the movie saw, but what we needed to see. If it gives the piece the nagging sense of not quite knowing how to end, it also reasserts that this is Dastmalchian’s chance, and he’s not gonna blow it.