SAN ANTONIO — The name Jack Delroy feels so perfect for a talk show personality that you might think at first “Late Night with the Devil” is cribbing from history. The name of Jack’s actual show, “Night Owls”? Less convincing. But the disparity is fitting for this movie about desperation festering for so long that you can practically notice beads of sweat rolling down the camera lens (not that the anxious TV audiences of the 1970s mind when they just want an escape from reality). All that festering done on Jack’s (David Dastmalchian) account over his years helming “Night Owls” as it tries in vain to reach Johnny Carson in the ratings eventually erupts, though you’ll spend most of “Late Night with the Devil’s” 93 minutes wondering if the directors, siblings Cameron and Colin Cairnes, will ever commit to the bit.
And which bit is it, anyway? There’s two ways to watch this movie, framed as a Halloween “Night Owls” episode that went careening off script and possibly into another dimension altogether: As either a hellish comedy of TV production errors that understands why we’d bust out laughing at the name Szandor D’Abo or a sorta-profound midnight freakout about selling our soul for audience members’ admiration. Confident as the Cairnes brothers occasionally seem to be that they can split the difference – namely inspired practical effects that would please David Cronenberg and some flare-ups of the surreal that show the sibling filmmaker embracing a delicious irony they could’ve used more of – it nonetheless becomes clear the more erratic Jack gets on set that the movie’s two personalities are ultimately holding each other back from reaching either’s full potential.
Savvy as it is that “Late Night with the Devil” frames itself as an unearthed television episode that plays out like we would have seen it on our living room sets, complete with charmingly exaggerated camera movements, hair-raising broadcast glitches and real-time commercial breaks that allow us to anticipate how much worse things can get, its faux-documentary approach kicks off with a cold open anchoring a macabre mood but also a suspicion that we’re being given far too much information to enjoy the ride for what it is. Narrative foundations are quickly laid for Jack’s ascent to broadcast success and the personal struggles (I shan’t spoil here) he endured along the way, establishing the stakes before he trots out a lineup of supposed mystics, skeptics and occult investigators who may or may not be as phony a personality as he is—as well as the level of cataclysm Jack might be setting up for the very people whose hearts he’s trying to win.
Credit where credit is due: The Cairnes know very well the contemporary media landscape they’ve made their movie in. What’s more: They know how much more equipped we are to spot that landscape’s rockier, more questionable terrain—where the trap doors are and perhaps even who’s pulling the drawstring. So we sit a little straighter when Jack’s supposed psychic guest, the theatrical Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), experiences a bracing episode after playing the live audience for fools, his fake accent and swagger suddenly lost as he thrashes about trying to decrypt mysterious signals he’s receiving. “Well, this certainly seems real,” we think, and though you can see the same thought forming behind Jack’s eyes, he’ll forge ahead anyway. This is more of a movie that teases out how far it’ll go rather than a mystery over whether its protagonist has retained any morality; even in this respect, however, “Late Night with the Devil” only ever approaches blood-curdling if this is your first taste of date-with-the-devil horror.
Maybe it’s asking too much (or for a different movie altogether) to wish that the Cairnes’ script didn’t so clearly telegraph who likely signed a deal with the devil in their movie’s opening minutes; it’s like giving us the books of Genesis and Revelations in the same breath while hoping the eventual flood is astounding enough to wipe our senses clean of prior expectation. “Late Night with the Devil” makes a memorable-enough attempt with its charismatic actors (the young Ingrid Torelli stands out as Lilly, a portal to hell on two legs) and a finale more brutal than outright scary.
But it’s hard not to think the most interesting version of “Late Night with the Devil” indulges more of a character-study tune that makes full use of the slippery slope between sympathetic and scheming that Dastmalchian occupies; perhaps then the climactic stumble, slide and crash might have hit deeper. Dastmalchian has been one of our most visible performers as of late with roles in “Oppenheimer,” James Gunn’s “Suicide Squad” and “Dune,” and he’s as good as anyone who's enjoyed his ascent to the top of screen-chewer mountain might expect in a too-rare starring role.
It is comparatively easy to point these things out as the viewer and not the artist. It’s easy, when we haven’t labored over the project ourselves for weeks or years, to overlook that we had no involvement in how a script was sculpted, a scene was executed or the decision to use a few seconds of AI-generated imagery for in-world cutaways was made. That last point specifically became a topic of discussion, debate and even derision in the days leading up to “Late Night with the Devil’s” release. As in all things, these conversations are improved with nuance and careful thought. With remembering, for instance, that the Cairnes’ decision to use AI in their movie was made during production months before it became a cardinal industry sin in 2023. The aesthetic touches AI was believed to have been used for are far from the most memorable, most consequential or most striking elements of “Late Night with the Devil,” in regards to the movie’s own aims.
Make no mistake: We’re not meant to take these goofy-cute late-night graphics as being particularly memorable, consequential or striking, either. Does that absolve the Cairnes? That’s a more complicated conversation than, say, what Jack ends up doing in “Late Night with the Devil.” It is fitting, however, that the conversation is renewed by a movie about the agency of audience members… and we certainly have more of that than the poor souls on the doomed “Night Owls” set. That’s showbiz, baby.
"Late Night with the Devil" is rated R for violent content, some gore, and language including a sexual reference. It's now in San Antonio theaters. Runtime: 1 hour, 33 minutes.
Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi
Written and directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes
2024
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