REVIEW: LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2023) Time to Touch that Dial.
If my frequent posts throughout the Halloween season didn’t give it away, I’m a pretty big fan of Horror films. So the excitement really kicks in when a new movie comes out that gets the scary movie nerds all worked up and talking about how “oh man, you’ve just gotta see this one!” It seems to happen on a semi-annual basis and here we are again with Late Night With the Devil. I typically like to squirrel away these new releases throughout the year and go into something I just now decided to call “Horror Hibernation”; saving them for that early August until the end of October Halloween time sweet spot.
What can I say, I was feeling a pretty strong itch and this one looked like it had the potential to be one hell of a scratch.
But unfortunately Late Night With the Devil wound up being more of an irritating tickle. Now there were four aspects that had yours truly particularly excited going in all of which for me, fell frustratingly short. The first of course being that I’m a big sucker for any movie set on Halloween night. It’s always nice to add to the lineup of traditional holiday viewing but this one won’t be joining the roster. The set is dressed with bats, cobwebs and pumpkins and some of the crew and audience members are wearing costumes but that’s about as far as it goes. There’s just nothing here that feels seasonal if that makes any sense but I do admit, this is a pretty minor gripe (though if it hadn’t been set on my personal favorite night of the year, I may have expected less). Which can also be said about the movie being a period piece taking place in the 70’s. That’s a pretty bold 1, 2 punch of an approach there because attempting to capture that atmosphere has it coming up against a decade absolutely overflowing with some top shelf, A1 horror movies. But it’s here too where the movie didn’t take it far enough and the camera work, sets, costumes, hair styling, the whole thing just looks cheap, an overall very bland and generic aesthetic that doesn’t transport you in any way.
The third thing is the overall premise: some crazy devil shit going down live on a late night talk show? That’s such a fantastic idea and so ripe with potential that at a certain point it made me completely turn on the movie because it just didn’t commit to the concept. For something that tells you from the beginning that what we are about to witness is footage from a live broadcast, it makes the baffling decision to show anything that happens not on “camera” in a handheld documentary style. So where is that footage coming from? It’s here where it should have turned into a finely crafted and traditionally shot film, a contrast with what doesn’t even look like but is intended to convey a genuine broadcast. There are instagram filters that can make images look more retro and authentic.
Up fourth and perhaps most crippling of all is the performance by David Dastmalchian. A character actor that I’ve enjoyed in smaller roles (Prisoners, The Dark Knight, Suicide Squad) who takes the lead here as Jack Delroy, the host in the midst of desperately battling King Carson for late night ratings supremacy. I was really rooting for him to knock this out of of the park but he is beyond miscast in the role. He’s completely devoid of that twinkle in the eye charisma and timing pedigree that you’d associate with this type of character and just flat out didn’t work. Being the lead and in almost every scene only serves to constantly remind you that this guy doesn’t exude the expected level of charm or confidence. His presence is so specific that I honestly think it could have worked a lot better if he was the host of a horror show on late night cable rather than a Tonight Show like talk show.
Anything can fall victim to unreasonable levels of hype leading up to the experience but take a look at what these guys had to say about it:
“I got a screener. It's absolutely brilliant. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Your results may vary, as they say, but I urge you to watch it when you can.”
- Stephen King
“I love it. It’s Rosemary’s Baby meets Network.”
- Kevin Smith
At least King tempered his praise a little bit at the end but that’s still pretty big talk from a couple of heavy hitters. Jeez guys come on, it sounds like you owe the director money or something. Now I don’t really hate anything, so I didn’t hate this movie but at a certain point totally began actively disliking it. I was anticipating a drawn out, slow burn exercise in tension but wound up feeling like I was watching a the worst episode of Documentary Now! ever made. Everything about it rings false to an amateurish degree which is a shame because on paper it sounds amazing.
But not the ending though. Oh man that “twist” at the end likely had the writer throw his back out from patting it too hard but to me, landed with an absolute thud.
I remember when everyone thought that The Blair Witch Project was actual, real found footage. And then later on the Paranormal Activity series stepped in and were real popular for a while. Then not long after that, everyone got into the whole “elevated horror” thing that’s been quite trendy for the last decade plus (It Follows, The Witch, The Babadook, Hereditary, Barbarian, etc.). All of these movies have qualities that I enjoyed to some extent and were made with varying degrees of talented craftsmanship, but none of them y’know…scared me.
Unfortunately, neither Late Night With the Devil.
