I don’t know quite when or how it happened, but David Dastmalchian has quietly become one of my favourite actors over the last year. Between solid performances in The Last Voyage of the Demeter, The Boogeyman, DUNE (2021), Oppenheimer, Blade Runner 2049, and a score of other credits to his name, Dastmalchian has amassed a series of supporting roles that frequently hold their own with much higher-profile names. But despite this laundry list of credits, Dastmalchian rarely had the opportunity to headline a feature until the new horror Late Night With The Devil, from Australian sibling filmmakers Colin and Cameron Cairnes. In this 70’s-set thriller, Dastmalchian literally gets to take centre stage, and absolutely knocks it out of the park in what may be my favourite horror movie of the year.
Things are not going well for late-night talk show host Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian). Despite a strong start against the perennial king of late night, Johnny Carson, in the early 1970s, his weekday variety/chat show ‘Night Owls With Jack Delroy’ is flagging in the ratings and struggling to keep up with Carson, who has consistently bested Jack in the timeslot. Delroy is charming and has a seemingly happy marriage with a glamourous stage star as a bonafide Hollywood ‘it couple’, but that ultimate success – both in the ratings and on the Emmy stage – has continually slipped through his fingers. This decline coincides with his wife contracting lung cancer and gradually withering away before Jack’s very eyes, and her death causing Jack to take a brief hiatus from the show. Oh, and Delroy is also part of a shadowy ‘mens club located in the redwoods of California’ which has big cult/Mason vibes, and it’s strongly implied that this totally-not-a-cult has been pulling strings on Delroy’s behalf for some time.
After an extended voiceover by Michael Ironside that details the above, we open on the sixth season of ‘Night Owls’, in 1977. Jack has just returned from mourning his wife. Jack’s producer, Leo Fiske (Josh Quong Tart), whose slimeballishness is palpable even through the screen, is pressing his host to get a big rating for Sweeps Week. It also happens to be Halloween night, and the scheduled guests all tie into the spooky theme. Christou the psychic (Fayssal Bazzi) tries to divine the audience’s innermost secrets with a certain amount of success. Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss) is a decidedly-unlikeable former magician-turned-skeptic who seems intent on pulling back the curtain on the paranormal activities in Delroy’s studio. But the headline guest is para-psychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) who seems to have a connection with Jack. She brings her teenaged patient Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) with her, who is the subject of Dr June’s latest book, “Conversations With The Devil.” Lilly is the sole survivor of a Satanic cult’s mass suicide, and in June’s care has finally started to, if not live a normal life, then to at least open up about her trauma. She claims to be plagued with a demon named ‘Mr Wiggles’, though (think Captain Howdy) and struggles to contain the darkness that ‘wiggles’ into her subconscious.
Using both the footage that purportedly aired that fateful Halloween night as well as black-and-white ‘behind the scenes’ footage from the studio and backstage, there’s a clear air of desperation on the part of Jack and his crew. This is their last gasp before the station brass pulls the plug on the show once and for all, as Jack’s contract is set to expire. One last grab for a big rating might turn things all around, but at what cost? The Faustian bargain Jack and his producer strike to get attention on the show is bound to have dire consequences as Jack and his crew begin to reckon with forces far beyond their imaginations.
Late Night With The Devil admirably builds a substantial back story around all its characters, with the voiceover introducing the film doing a fair bit of heavy lifting. Though I’m always skeptical of big narrative dumps off the top of a film, since they’re too often used as crutches for lazy writing, that’s not at all the case here. The framing of Late Night With The Devil via the Ironside narration feels authentic and immediately imbues the proceedings with a strong sense of place, and making you as the viewer feel as though you happened upon this documentary about the 1970’s-set show while flipping channels. It’s got a similar feel to Amanda Kramer’s Give Me Pity in that we’re watching a stage performer and a production itself devolve into chaos, though Late Night With The Devil leans a little less esoteric.
The performances in Late Night With The Devil all feel authentic even as they’re portraying the inauthenticity of television. Dastmalchian, of course, takes centre stage but his guests are equally important. Torelli as Lilly, especially, has the unenviable task of having to put in a performance that’ll inevitably be compared to Linda Blair’s Regan from The Exorcist, largely considered one of the greatest horror portrayals of all time. But, admirably, Torelli develops a character and a representation of demonic possession that feels all its own. Dramatic shifts from the docile and shy, but enthusiastic about being featured on national television, teenager to the ominous demon are instantaneous and turn scenes on a dime. It would be easy for either of these, or the other players on Jack’s stage to feel cartoonish, but they feel layered and realistic, especially as they cast off their veneers in the ‘backstage’ footage, and even more so as the show becomes more and more desperate.
The authenticity of both the performances and the setting in Late Night With The Devil take a turn when, late in the film, a fourth-wall-breaking moment between Jack and his (tv) audience caused me to squirm in my own seat. It’s one of the reasons that the Cairnes’ film will, and has, sat with me for so long. Long after the lights have gone down, and the red lights of the cameras have been extinguished.
Late Night With The Devil screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival.
