31 Days of Halloween: Late Night with the Devil

2023, Cameron & Colin Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) -- Shudder

This was added to The List earlier in the year, downloaded as soon as it came out, before I signed up for Shudder. This year, 2024, has been a bumper crop for horror movies and I was downloading more that caught my interest than in any other year before. That may have been because of some factor a few years ago that spawned bankable interest in horror, but unfortunately it doesn't mean an increase in quality films, just volume. All things pointed to this being a break-out movie: the unique setting (found footage from a 70s TV talk show), a face we know and like (David Dastmalchian) and a pair of directors with some horror cred under their name, albeit not ones we had seen before.

So, as said, found footage. Via a voice over, we learn we are about to watch the last ever episode of "Night Owls, with Jack Delroy", a late night talk show competing with Johnny Carson. We start with a positive background to Jack (Dastmalchian, Ant-Man), a likable scamp who experiences some tragedy, and who has some connection to some weird culty "men's club". When his ratings flag, he begins to court controversy to gain viewers. That all leads to a Halloween episode where he is going to interview a girl possessed by a demon, and her handler.

The setup is a lot of fun. We see actual TV show segments, but we also get to see documentary style or "b-roll" from when it cuts to commercials. It begins with Christou (Fayssal Bazzi, We're Not Here to Fuck Spiders), an obviously fake medium channeling the dead relatives but basically screwing it up, until he hits the pre-setup ringer. Joining him onstage is the renowned skeptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss, Kuu Kuu Harajuku) to refute and mock everything he is doing. Basically they are recreating The Amazing Randi vs Uri Geller animosity for an audience (us, not the TV show's audience) too young to remember these people. That is, until Christou has an unfortunate encounter with a real spirit who shouts "Minnie!" followed by him vomiting an unimaginable amount of black liquid and collapsing on stage. Cut to commercial and rush the unconscious Christou away on a stretcher, while the crew rushes to clean up the stage, and Haig, for the next act.

Said next act is psychologist and supernatural investigator June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon, Harrow) and Lily (Ingrid Torrelli, The End), a girl who survived a Satanic cult. Ross-Mitchell has found a way to "safely" communicate with the demonic entity that inhabits Lily, but.... well, we wouldn't have a movie if that didn't go wrong.

And it does, but the movie was all focused on the build up, and ... not the climax? There were so many elements to juggle: that Jack was part of one of those Hollywood occult club, that his wife had died of cancer and maybe as part of a club sacrifice (what a scamp!), the skeptic getting definitive proof of the supernatural, the psychologist getting come-uppance, and Lily being more than a willing supplicant to whatever demonic entity ("Mr. Wriggles") they were summoning. But the payout wasn't as... fun? Lots of lights, death and Jack looking shell-shocked, along with a brief otherworldly depiction as we see the movie switch from the TV format to widescreen, to show us we are not in the found-footage mode any longer. The movie was rather well polished in what it laid out but less than satisfying in how it concluded, but I am not sure what it should  have shown us, just that we were disappointed.

Still, nice to see Dastmalchian get a bit more scenery to chew on.