LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL **** Australia / United Arab Emirates / USA 2023 Dir: Cameron Cairnes & Colin Cairnes. 93 mins
Playing out like the lost footage of a cursed 70s-era talk show episode, Late Night With The Devil clocks in at a meagre 93 minutes. But in terms of its scope, we have got our hands on a found-footage epic.
This has the makings of a cult movie, the kind that will spawn multiple theories and interpretations from committed genre fans and pretentious cinephiles alike. Late Night With The Devil can best be described as claustrophobically intense and fiendishly funny in a self-aware manner.
David Dastmalchian, the character actor you would have spotted before in a plethora of DC and Marvel projects along with auteur projects like Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners (2013) and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), finally gets his shot at playing lead as he stars as the charismatic late night television host Jack Delroy.
Enjoying considerable popularity as the face of variety show Night Owls, Delroy is intent at overshadowing his more mainstream competitor, Johnny Carson. After a tastefully done vintage-style archival documentary which gives us a rundown of Dastmalchian’s morally ambiguous hero, we are transported to a particular Night Owls taping on the Halloween of 1977.
Think of the movie as a dark joke, one that starts with “a psychic, a sceptic, a parapsychologist, and a former cult member walk into a TV show set”. What follows forms the remainder of the premise, neatly intercut with behind-the-scenes footage from the show’s advertisement slots.
Late Night With The Devil isn’t subtle about its influences, ranging from the Charles Manson-fueled Satanic Panic of the 1970s to genre classics like The Exorcist (1973). The nail-biting voyeurism that the moviegoers share with the talk show’s audience is even comparable to the third act of Joker (2019), when Joaquin Phoenix’s sad clown wreaks havoc on Robert De Niro’s set.
But despite the comparisons it might draw, the overall execution of Late Night With The Devil is unabashedly fresh and we get the first truly memorable horror of 2024. Props to the art direction team (pun intended) for conjuring a truly believable retro Johnny Carson-esque TV set while the VFX department churn out simple yet
effective visuals that seamlessly tread the line between nuanced professionalism and indie amateurism.
Perhaps the only complaint one can have from Late Night With The Devil is the short runtime as the opening archival footage reveals a lot about Delroy’s personality beyond his TV theatrics. A director’s cut or a spin-off might just satisfy the viewer’s curiosity. But for now, the finished product suffices.
Directed by Australian brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes, the movie yet again proves how the Land Down Under is revolutionising new-age horror (Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014), Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk To Me (2022).
A Shudder original, Late Night With The Devil has had a limited theatrical release in the UK and the US. Try to catch it in a dingy cinema for the most enhanced viewing experience because this is indeed the stuff of midnight screenings.
Review by Shaurya Thapa