Late Night with the Devil
Apr. 19th, 2024 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjlasky7I am currently in a bit of a holding pattern. I'm done with antibiotics, but my endoscopy has been postponed until next month. I'll be done with blood thinners after Sunday morning, but I won't know if they worked on the clot until May 9th. I'm waiting for waterproofers to come in and give me an estimate on my basement, but that's still ten days away.
(My wife also had some vital tests postponed until early May. We are very annoyed.)
In the meantime, a brief pop culture review while I'm waiting....
*****************
Late Night with the Devil (written and directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes) is a neat little horror movie, a mostly successful "found footage" film with a unique twist: with the exception of a brief documentary introduction, it takes place entirely within one episode of a late 1970s late night talk show.
The talk show in question is Night Owls, hosted by the affable Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), who has been lagging behind Johnny Carson his entire career and is perpetually one step away from cancelation. In a desperate bid to boost ratings, Delroy turns his Halloween episode into a dive into the paranormal, featuring a 12 year old girl supposedly possessed by a demon.
The movie is most effective when it stays in its chosen lane and sticks to the confines of the talk show, with Delroy interacting with his sidekick, a psychic, and a Ricky Jay-like skeptic (played with bitchy flamboyance by Ian Bliss). The Cairnes subtly, incrementally ratchet up the tension, depending on their host to guide the action until the inevitable blood soaked finale.
And Dastmalchian, in the driver's seat for the first time in his career, delivers. He's made a living playing tragic weirdoes in the margins of big movies (Polka Dot Man anyone?), but he shows here that he's more than capable of handling a lead role. Throughout the movie, we wonder about Delroy's motives. Is he just interested in putting on a freak show for the rubes or does he have deeper motivations? Delroy never loses his show biz bonhomie, but Dastmalchian lets you see the struggles going on underneath. It's a finely tuned, engaging performance.
The movie is not perfect. There are "master tape" excerpts from the Night Owls studio during commercials and the camera is just a little too perfectly in place for key conversations. (It kind of breaks the illusion.) And in the hallucinatory final sequence, we find out that everything we thought we knew about Jack Delroy turns out to be... exactly what we thought. (It's not bad, but it's kind of anticlimactic.)
These flaws don't ruin the movie, though. It's a solid debut for the Cairnes, and it proves that Dastmalchian is ready for bigger things. He says he wants to play a vampire. Give this man some fangs!
[Late Night with the Devil is still in selected theaters and is currently streaming on Shudder.]
(My wife also had some vital tests postponed until early May. We are very annoyed.)
In the meantime, a brief pop culture review while I'm waiting....
*****************
Late Night with the Devil (written and directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes) is a neat little horror movie, a mostly successful "found footage" film with a unique twist: with the exception of a brief documentary introduction, it takes place entirely within one episode of a late 1970s late night talk show.
The talk show in question is Night Owls, hosted by the affable Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), who has been lagging behind Johnny Carson his entire career and is perpetually one step away from cancelation. In a desperate bid to boost ratings, Delroy turns his Halloween episode into a dive into the paranormal, featuring a 12 year old girl supposedly possessed by a demon.
The movie is most effective when it stays in its chosen lane and sticks to the confines of the talk show, with Delroy interacting with his sidekick, a psychic, and a Ricky Jay-like skeptic (played with bitchy flamboyance by Ian Bliss). The Cairnes subtly, incrementally ratchet up the tension, depending on their host to guide the action until the inevitable blood soaked finale.
And Dastmalchian, in the driver's seat for the first time in his career, delivers. He's made a living playing tragic weirdoes in the margins of big movies (Polka Dot Man anyone?), but he shows here that he's more than capable of handling a lead role. Throughout the movie, we wonder about Delroy's motives. Is he just interested in putting on a freak show for the rubes or does he have deeper motivations? Delroy never loses his show biz bonhomie, but Dastmalchian lets you see the struggles going on underneath. It's a finely tuned, engaging performance.
The movie is not perfect. There are "master tape" excerpts from the Night Owls studio during commercials and the camera is just a little too perfectly in place for key conversations. (It kind of breaks the illusion.) And in the hallucinatory final sequence, we find out that everything we thought we knew about Jack Delroy turns out to be... exactly what we thought. (It's not bad, but it's kind of anticlimactic.)
These flaws don't ruin the movie, though. It's a solid debut for the Cairnes, and it proves that Dastmalchian is ready for bigger things. He says he wants to play a vampire. Give this man some fangs!
[Late Night with the Devil is still in selected theaters and is currently streaming on Shudder.]
