Late Night with the Devil: Film Review
After playing creeps, weirdos and oddballs for the vast majority of his career, it made a pleasant change to see David Dastmalchian as a charismatic talk show host in Late Night with the Devil.
He plays Jack Delroy, the host of the 1970s late-night talk show Night Owls. The show has been dwindling in the rates so he has been resorting to desperate and shocking tactics to draw in viewers. For the 1977 Halloween special, his guests include medium Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), supernatural sceptic/debunker Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss) and parapsychologist Dr June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who attempts to commune with the devil living inside her patient Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) live on TV.
Late Night with the Devil is basically a found footage horror. After a brief news package about Jack’s life and career and the history of Night Owls, the film is the master tape of that fated 1977 episode as well as previously unseen footage recorded during the advert breaks.
Demonic possession films have been done to death (pun intended) but placing it within a late-night talk show setting felt refreshing and inspired. I loved the period set design and attention to ’70s details as well as Dastmalchian’s charming, winning and cheesily upbeat host.
I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dastmalchain in a lead role, proving he’s capable of playing against type. The atmosphere was really unnerving, unsettling and very creepy and there was one memorable body horror moment that was fantastically gross and brought to life with ’70s-style practical effects.
However, I must admit that I wanted directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes to push the horror further, I would have liked more information about Jack’s ties to a mysterious organisation, and I needed more from the ending to come away completely satisfied.
Late Night with the Devil is a refreshing, exciting horror with a very different performance from Dastmalchian.
In cinemas from Friday 22nd March