Something of a frustrating watch for me, 'Late Night With The Devil' on the whole, is a solid picture. But never quite scratches the itch I need when it comes to this kind of film making. For a bit of context, im into lomography which is the art of lo-fi film making and photography. A lot of my work is based in analogue production techniques and on top of predominantly working in the medium of analogue film making, I spend a large chunk of my time as a film critic reviewing 'Shot on Video' movies and films that are trying to BE 'Shot on Video' or 'Found on Video' movies.
'Late Night With the Devil' is an example of the 'Found on Video' genre. The gist of the plot is that, in the late 1970's there was a TV show called 'Night Owls' hosted by Chicagos own 'Jack Delroy', a chat show that was on track to match or even surpass the Johnny Carson Show in terms of viewership. When, one fateful halloween night, during a broadcast unspeakable things took place and the show was quickly cancelled, pulled from listings and the final show became the stuff of legends.
That is until now, as a full studio tape has recently been recovered alongside 'off air' recordings of events from behind the scenes that night. And this film pieces together the footage to finally find the answer as to what happened on that fateful broadcast.
And...right off the bat, if you are a casual viewer or a horror fan who isnt *THAT* into the technical details of trying to recreate old looking TV. Then I think you'll probably really enjoy this film. *I* really enjoyed this film for what its worth. But that nagging part of my brain that KNOWS how these things would have been shot and how this footage would have looked after being randomly missing for 35-45 years. WOULD NOT let me just settle in and enjoy the picture.
For a starters, the script itself is 'fine' in fact, for the most part i'd go as far as to say it was pretty good. The plotting reminded me a little bit of another Shudder production 'The Cleansing Hour' which had very similar plot beats and tones...but married up to the opening half of Chris LaMartina's 'Out There Halloween Megatape' (Only, for my money, La Martina more convincingly replicates the feeling of a 'talk show' environment.)
The film has some decent twists and turns, its got a bold direction in terms of where it wants the film to go, tonally it mixes dark comedy with some pretty gnarley horror moments. The pacings relatively solid. If I were to nitpick. I think the film overplays its hand at the ending. I dont feel its spoilers here to mention that in the third act the film cuts to a 'Technical difficulties' sign once or twice, and I feel like one of the latter instances of the 'Technical difficulties' postings would have been the perfect 'out' for the film, leaving it open ended and down to audience interpretation as to what they saw...
Only; the film continues on past that...for 10 whole minutes longer...in which it explains EXACTLY what happened in PAINFUL detail, then ends with a bit of a contrived closer that *tries* to leave it open ended again, but it doesnt feel NEARLY as naturalistic or belivable as the station just cutting broadcast once things got a bit intense.
The characters are all pretty solid, but I think the supporting cast arnt really played to their fullest ability. They come across as a bit one note throughout, and while thats fine for the most part given that everyones *Supposed* to be playing up to the cameras. it did begin to get a bit annoying when certain personalities in the film continue to double down and double down on beliefs that have clearly been disproven by that point.
Outisde of that though, the scripts solid, fun for the most part, sets up several points and I feel pays them off quite well. its good!
Which leads me to the thing I dislike the most about this film, The Direction. The biggest problem I have with this film is how it approaches its subject. Bearing in mind, this is supposed to be a 'recovered media' film. So you'd expect a studio tape sat in someones attic for 35-45 years wouldnt exactly be 'fresh'. But here, the film's clearly been shot in HD and then cropped into 4:3 and had a low grade 'VHS' filter slapped over it. the glitch effects throughout, are digital effects, and they barely use those digital glitch effects except for when it wants to add to the atmosphere.
It would have LITERALLY cost $20 to run this film onto a VHS tape, degrade it a few times and then capture it back into a computer. and it would have looked ten TIMES more realistic and believable than whats here. They could play around with distortions, they could really sell the idea that this thing has been moulding away somewhere and is all we have of that night.
Secondly, they help smooth over some continuity issues and give the audience context via 'behind the scenes footage' that was supposedly ALSO captured on the night AND was supposedly ALSO lost until now. This is show via black and white cuts that happen whenever a commercial break happens on the film.
and...this is quite confusing on a few levels, because the footage is presented in widescreen instead of 4:3 and is pretty much crystal clear. but a lot of the starting points for these shots are either 1:1 from the stuido camera shots, or they're just off to the left or right of the studio camera shots. The footage is pristine, so im assuming they dont want us to think that it's feed from the studio cameras (and given those studio cameras in the 70s were HUGE and weighed a ton AND had meters upon meters of cabling trailing them, when these cameras glide down the gants and behind the studio walls for an intimate moment between the cast members. It reallly ruined the illusion for me)
The next guess is that they could be 8mm or 16mm cameras maybe? but if its supposed to be 8mm, its WAY to clean for that, and I dont think they'd let intimate conversations be captured on huge 16mm cameras. so I dont honestly know what they expect me to think this footage is supposed to be recovered from...its equally quite cinematically shot when it does go to the behind the scenes stuff...which again, really kind of threw me given the static nature of the studio footage.
Taking a step back from THAT even though, theres no attempt to rough up ANY of this work out of the aforementioned glitches...as anyone who's watched studio tape footage will tell you, VERY rarely does a FULL studio tape complete with crystal clear sound turn up in immaculate condition. theres usually regular audio drop out. there'll be moments where the camera just,wasnt pointing at the right thing. there'll be focus issues while the cameras get into position for the next shot. if its a multi cam setup there may be moments where no camera footage exists because it was captured by a seperate mobile camera that has lost footage.
It would have been easy to manufacture a bit more tension/atmosphere here by simply roughing up and cropping the behind the scenes footage, having visual or audio drop out periodically where the footage doesnt survive. Maybe cut to a few shreds of 'off air' recordings from viewers at home who filmed their TV sets where theres gaps in the footage. distort the audio and video to make really make the footage feel like its had a history...but they just...dont. As such the film feels WAY too sanitized for me, its too clean. I really appreciate what they're trying to do here, and honestly, most of it works fine...But the presentation really felt quite half hearted (and thats not mentioning the whole AI debarcle) and it really made me wish they'd got a lomographer onside to help with the editing and post work on this because as it stands, to me? this is ACHING for a fanedit to do what is a pretty great idea justice.
The cine is a similar problem to my thoughts on the direction. They absolutely nail that late 70s aesthetic, the studio footage feels real with a 3-4 cam studio setup on rails. it feels believeable in that regard, compositions are mostly solid, but again, I feel would have benefitted from some grit thrown into the mix. The behind the scene footage broke the flow for me, I think with some work (ala: Cannibal Holocaust) to rough the footage up a bit, it could have been implemented better. But again; its too clean and cinematic to really feel like someone handheld freeshooting covert footage of the studio during the downtime. Oh! and also as mentioned. i'd have ended the film about 10 minutes earlier than it did. because that last 10 minutes is visually TOTALLY different from the hour and 20 that preceeded it and really threw me out of the movie unecessarily.
The edit in an offline sense is great, pretty solid it looks and feels EXACTLY like a late night show from the 70's should! The online work is problematic for me, but...as I said at the top fo this thing, if you cant tell the difference between REAL VHS and filter VHS...Do NOT let me get in the way of your fun.
The performances are delightful with David Dastmalchian absolutely making this film his own as Jack, he's one of the ONLY complex characters in this thing and he bounces between a wide range of emotions effortlessly. he's really quite superb. Theres good in the supporting cast too, particualarly Ingrid Torelli and Laura Gordon as June and her adopted test subject Lilly. again they bring a solid performance to the fray and Torelli in particular REALLY sells her horror scenes. Shes probably one of the best 'possessed' actresses i've seen in a good while.
Unfortunately; the supporting cast do get stifled a bit by the narrative. they have to stay in performative character for most of the runtime, which makes it difficult for them to get any kind of nuance into their roles...they're fine...they're just a little overbearing in places.
Ultimately; 'Late Night With The Devil' is a fun film, that I feel is just missing that final coat of realism. When your into the action heavy finale and all I can think is 'I hope this film gets a physical release so I can rip it and fix all the stuff they couldnt be arsed to get dirty doing themselves' you know somethings gone a bit amiss...
Non the less, while I didnt 'love' this film (I'll stick to 'WNUF' thank you very much) I did appreciate what it was trying to do, I did enjoy it, I would recommend it to anyone into horror or analogue horror. Theres a lot here to like...I just wish it was shorter and better researched....
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/late-night-with-the-devil/
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