Movie Review – Late Night With The Devil

For the longest time, David Dastmalchian has lurked in the shadows and darkness of some of our favourite films, a chameleonic Crispin Glover-esque performer with a tendency for kooky, creepy, weird characters, and although he has never taken the spotlight for himself his fans around the world have often wondered what he would produce were he given a leading role. With Late Night With The Devil, we now have our answer, and it is glorious. Dastmalchian leads a terrific primarily Australian cast in this horror-black-comedy-possession zinger, shouldering the role of a popular but underhanded late night US talk show host in the mid-70’s, whose Halloween show is the subject of this loose “found footage” subgenre aesthetic.

A co-production between about fifty different studios and labels, Late Night With The Devil was shot in Melbourne, Australia and is confined almost exclusively to a single studio-bound location – the set of Night Owls, a fictional live talk show broadcast across the USA until its sudden cessation in the mid-70’s. Dastmalchian plays show host Jack Delroy, a man whose wife Madeline (Georgina Haig) dies a year prior from cancer, and for whom ratings success has largely eluded him and the show’s producer, Leo Fiske (Josh Quong Tart). As the show prepares for Halloween, Delroy has on as guests a psychic, Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a one-time magician now turned skeptic and debunker of supernatural, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), and a local parapsychologist, June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her ward, reputedly possessed young cult survivor Lily D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli), with the tone of the film one of spooky dalliance with demonic powers. The film is presented as an unearthed (and unedited) representation of the original television broadcast as well as surreptitiously recorded off-air footage, and this sense of historical realism really delivers on the premise.

From it’s delightfully sonorous montage setup opening (narrated by Michael Ironside) giving is an “in” for the life of Jack Delroy and his Night Owls show, through to its tense, scabrous chat-show formula as people with competing feelings to the ghostly and demonic things occurring make themselves heard, right up to its bloody, gruesome conclusion, few horror film have acheved such succinctly sharp possession-horror success in recent times. Directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, who also co-wrote the script, the film has a tenacious solidity maximising the chills that come along with it, as it slowly, carefully builds up the ratcheting creep-factor before unleashing it’s all-too-brief moment of abject terror. Casual horror fans will likely baulk at the seemingly minimalised horror aspects of the film, although when things do kick off, there’s plenty of shock and awe to behold. I would argue that this is one of the strongest horror films of the last year or so, with pulsating pacing – the “live broadcast” aspects of the film are mixed with fly-on-the-wall behind the scenes type footage (it bends logic but doesn’t entirely break it, in truth) and the effect of watching something occur from a hilariously on-point “period piece” production perspective is terrific.

The cast are all quite excellent, from major roles to small, and with David Dastmalchian’s charismatic and slightly off-beat turn as Jack Delroy – perhaps the most straightforward role the actor has ever taken on! – the film rests comfortably in great hands. Dastlamchian eschews genuine talk-show-host cheese and plays it uncomfortably uneven, with the viewer never quite sure of Delroy’s motivations or attitudes aside from the between-commercial-breaks sequence pauses. It’s a fascinating example of a supporting actor absolutely nailing a lead role, and I cannot wait for him to find his way into more of them. The film’s primary antagonist, however, isn’t the titular devil, nor the possessed girl with a demon inside, but rather Ian Bliss’ skeptical Carmichael Haig. Bliss, perhaps better recognised by US audiences as Bane/Agent Smith in the second and third Matrix films, is supremely good in his role here, barking and belligerent at those he perceives as trying to dupe the television audience (which, frankly,, is everyone) and generally taking people to task for their wobbly beliefs. The film sees Delroy and Carmichael as obvious foils for the other, particularly with the revelation that Delroy might also be involved with the occult through a celebrity retreat in the woods often seen to engage in bizarre rituals. Laura Gordon and Ingrid Torelli are excellent (if underwritten) as the resident “professional” specialist and possessed girl respectively, while Josh Quong Tart is hilarious as the show’s drug-addled and go-go-go producer. Rhys Auteri is weirdly inconsistent as the show’s sidekick, Jack, and I struggled to get a handle on this character in particular.

For a lot of folks, Late Night With The Devil will either live or die on the strength of the film’s climactic showstopping sequence of gore and destruction. I found it a fascinating filmmaking style to really tease the viewer with possibilities but never quite reveal what’s going on until the last possible minute – is the girl possessed for real or not? The arguments for both are strong throughout the movie, although as an objective observer and long time horror fan we can see what’s coming a mile off: the fun is in the delivery. The Cairnes boys have delivered a high quality low-budget horror film that lingers long after viewing, a remarkable achievement considering their relative obscurity prior to this. It’s a softly-softly movie experience for the most part, that exploded with rage in the third act, and is most definitely recommended for any fan of the genre.