Late Night with the Devil

If the first 10 minutes of Late Night with the Devil don’t scare you off, a reference to “tall trees” will offer a clue as to what’s really at work in this dread-inducing horror flick. Written and directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, it puts David Dastmalchian in the substantive leading role he’s long deserved. The best movie of its kind in what’s been an especially good year for the genre, it’s now streaming on Hulu and Shudder after concluding its theatrical run.

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Unfolding in real time on October 31, 1977, the film takes place on the set of Night Owls, a distant second to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, as host Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian) attempts to close that gap and ensure his continued employment. He does so with a bit of Halloween shock value, first by having on a self-proclaimed medium and then by hosting a parapsychologist and the 13-year-old girl she’s been treating for “psychic infestation.” Lily, who was rescued from a satanic cult that worshipped an entity known as Abraxas, may or may not be possessed by that same demonic spirit — something Jack intends to find out live on air.

Dastmalchian has the late-night mannerisms down pat, placing a hand in his pocket during his monologue and gesturing expressively during each punchline. Jack recently lost his wife to cancer and seems like a decent sort, though he’s more blunt backstage (which we see, behind-the-scenes style, during every commercial break) than he is in front of the camera. Late Night with the Devil blurs those two worlds perfectly: what the studio audience sees and what we see aren’t always the same, and tension begins simmering immediately. Scoring a high rating requires taking the misbegotten show to its logical conclusion, while everything else suggests pulling the plug once things go pear-shaped.

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That descent happens so gradually that Jack feels powerless to stop it. First is the medical episode experienced by that supposed medium, the mononymous Christou, which doesn’t seem to have been solely a physical phenomenon. Then there’s the haunting gaze and blunt responses of Lily, who can’t stop staring at the camera even when being spoken to by Jack and seems oddly sanguine about her near-death experience at the hands of a death cult.

Late Night with the Devil carves its own identity from familiar materials.

What follows is presented as, and has the authentic feel of, an uncovered recording that was quickly pulled from the air and never meant to be seen again. It exists somewhere between found footage and the kind of old-school throwback so common to horror, which has been increasingly nostalgic of late — a consequence, one presumes, of filmmakers who grew up on the genre hoping to replicate the feel of their childhood favorites. Anyone who’s seen Ghostwatch may consider this a spiritual successor, but don’t call it a knockoff. Late Night with the Devil carves its own identity from familiar materials, making a unique space for itself in an increasingly crowded field.

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Dastmalchian — whom you’ve likely seen in everything from The Dark Knight and Dune to Ant-Man and Twin Peaks: The Return — is responsible for much of that. You can see the desperation behind every smile, the sense that continuing with this broadcast is ill-advised at best coming through every time he decides to keep doing it anyway. The slow-creep nature of the plot ensures that we’re right there alongside him, with bad decisions (some made tonight, others years earlier) dragging him down like quicksand. That shouldn’t be enjoyable to watch, but it is — part of the counterintuitive appeal of horror in general and Late Night with the Devil in particular.