There are a few movies that manage to effectively combine the supernatural tension of a horror film, the media satire of a talk show, and the 1970s setting. Released in the fall of 2023, “Late Night with the Devil” is styled as found footage or a lost-tape recording of a 1970s television broadcast, specifically Oct. 31, 1977. The broadcast is called Night Owls with Jack Delroy.
Jack is struggling as a late-night talk show host desperate to regain his show’s popularity after his show ratings have dropped and his wife has died of lung cancer.
To regain his talk show stardom, Jack has filled the evening’s lineup with a variety of guests. The show begins with Christou, a self-proclaimed psychic and medium, followed by Carmichael Haig, a former magician turned skeptic, who offers a $100,000 challenge to anyone who can prove a genuine supernatural claim. Finally, Jack concludes the evening with Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, a parapsychologist and author, paired with Lilly D’Abo, the 13-year-old sole survivor of a satanic church mass suicide who claims to be possessed by a demon.
At first, the show is filled with staged, lackluster supernatural occurrences, sprinkled with cheesy jokes and magic tricks to spur the audience. However, the evening slowly starts to go awry as the stage lights flicker uncontrollably, static fills the monitors, and unexplained supernatural occurrences increase with each new guest added to the show.
Between each segment, we see off-air moments that reveal the escalating cracks in the production of the show, crew members increasingly getting unnerved, and Jack’s composure slipping with each new development on the show. Still, Jack remains committed to keeping the show going despite losing more and more control over the direction of the evening.
The film does a great job of nailing the aesthetic of the 1970s, from the design of the talk-show stage and vintage clothing to the VHS tape effects and references to real-life people from the era. The movie maintained this aesthetic throughout, even with its many supernatural or corny elements. The aesthetic meshed well with the film’s plot, which centers on mysterious groups like the men of the grove or the coven of the blood moon, sprinkled throughout the talk show segments.
This film features David Dastmalchian playing the struggling late-night talk show host Jack Delroy. David has appeared in several other prominent movies, including “Dune” (2021), “Oppenheimer,” “The Dark Knight,” “Ant-Man,” and many more. He showcases his great range as an actor once again in this film, his depiction of old-school showmanship mixed with hints of a broken man.
Unlike some recent horror films, “Late Night with the Devil” intrigues the average moviegoer to connect the dots and speculate about the fate of Jack and his talk show. There will be several times where the film will have you questioning what exactly is real or happened. The film’s ending is intentionally open-ended, leaving the decision up to the viewer about what happened late that Halloween night.
