The most stylish horror film of the year so far is about a late night talk show
Horror films have really been lacking in panache lately. Of course, there have been plenty of horror films with great stories or structural conceits, or excellent scares. But covering the basic elements of memorable horror isn’t the same as stretching stylistically and blatantly adhering to a specific aesthetic, time period, or atmosphere like Shudder and IFC’s new horror movie. Late Night with the Devil do. That film, which hits theaters this week, has enough flair to make up for what the rest of the films lacked.
Set in the late 1970s, Late Night with the Devil is designed as a documentary that follows the fateful final broadcast of fictional late-night TV host Jack Delroy. During that broadcast something so terrible happened that it has haunted the history of live television ever since.
Jack (David Dastmalchian), we learn, rose through the ranks of late night talk show fame, once ranking second only to Johnny Carson. Jack’s success was due to his great charm and charisma, although the narration also mentions a shadowy connection with the real, cult-like world. Bohemian Cave – a magnet for 1970s conspiracy theories. But since those halcyon days, Jack’s ratings have plummeted and he’s starting to become desperate for viewers. This is how he decides to invite a supposedly possessed young girl to his show on Halloween night.
Image: IFC/Shudder
Directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes do a great job of committing to the ’70s vibe, starting with the faux-documentary aesthetic and the completely cheesy, made-for-TV title cards. The documentary introduces Jack’s life and career leading up to the broadcast with the kind of raucous bravado and manufactured seriousness that used to be the unmistakable sound of true crime reporting, before it became the domain of millennial podcasters.
It’s a perfect daytime TV show, the kind of sparkling shows you might watch if you were a kid in the ’70s, sick from school, watching what was on TV, and then left scarred for years to come . But the Cairnes brothers take care of that Late Night with the Devil‘s version is always undeniably itself a joke, as it informs the audience in an overly dramatic manner that we are witnessing behind-the-scenes footage intertwined with that fateful broadcast for the first time ever.
The behind the scenes footage is beautiful for a little extra flavor, but who cares Late Night with the Devil What’s remarkable is how carefully the Cairnes recreate the look and feel of a ’70s late-night show for the broadcast itself, which makes up the majority of the film’s running time. There’s a flashy, beautiful set, with reds and yellows that would jump off the screen even if you still had a black and white set, and a studio audience ready to clap and laugh at even the slightest mention of the struggling presidential administration of Jimmy Carter. .
Even the cartoonish interludes that announce the commercial breaks look excellent, even if they have caused some backlash online because they started out as AI-generated art. updated and modified to make more authentic. Everything from the sets to the band looks excellent and has been carefully designed to evoke the era. But the real star of the show, as always on late night television, is the host.
Image: IFC/Shudder
Jack is played to perfection by Dastmalchian, a character actor who always loves movies but is often relegated to a supporting player or small role. Dastmalchian ditches the ’70s clichés and skips playing a cheap Carson impersonation, instead imbuing Jack with the kind of nervous energy that made Dustin Hoffman a star in the era the film evokes. During the broadcast, Jack goes from charming to concerned to desperate in one heartbeat, like a bundle of exposed nerves all crackling with electricity at the same time. It’s a wonderful, moving, transporting performance, and it’s hard to imagine any other actor pulling it off so subtly or with so much heart.
With all their great production design held together by the glue of Dastmalchian’s performance, the Cairnes are happy to take on us Late Night with the Devil‘s ride, playfully tricking us into seeing things that aren’t really there, and winking at the camera when given the chance with little details like effects that seem era-appropriate, making it impossible to know whether they really happened in the photo. stage or are a trick of the broadcast. All these fun little details build up to a finale that’s somewhere between a hallucination and something you could imagine happening on the worst day in live TV history.
The worst part of the movie’s ending, though, is when we wake up Late Night with the Devil‘s hypnotic trance, we need to get back to films that just don’t have the same sense of late-night showmanship. No one can match the devil in style, it seems.
Late Night with the Devil debuts in theaters on March 22.