Late Night with the Devil is the best horror movie of the year so far
Horror fans have been a bit starved this year for new favourites with mainstream releases like Night Swim and Imaginary disappointing. But horror fans are about to feast well with three excellent new movies.
Sydney Sweeney's religious horror Immaculate has been unleashed in cinemas, while Australian chiller You'll Never Find Me is now available to stream on Shudder. The best of the trio of strong releases though is found-footage horror Late Night with the Devil.
We know what you're thinking. Found footage has had its day and there's not really anything you can do with it anymore. Yet Late Night with the Devil puts a Ghostwatch spin on the genre to deliver something original, compelling and terrifying.
Late Night with the Devil opens with a mockumentary sequence about late-night talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian). Once a rising star in the early 1970s, Jack's career has stalled following his wife's death and Night Owls with Jack Delroy is on life support.
In 1977, faced with the end of his career, Jack decided to go all-out with a Halloween special that featured a psychic and a former magician-turned-skeptic. His most controversial guest though is a parapsychologist and the subject of her latest book: young teenager Lilly who is the sole survivor of a Satanic church's mass suicide.
Unknown to anybody but Jack and his producer, Jack intended to use Lilly to summon a demon live on TV to save his show and his career. It went about as well as you'd expect, and Late Night with the Devil presents the complete unedited master tape of that fateful episode.
Of course, Night Owls with Jack Delroy was never a real show and there wasn't a live broadcast of a possession on Halloween night in 1977. The genius of Late Night with the Devil is that it'll often make you question if you're genuinely watching something real.
The retro production design is exceptional – it's worth noting there has been an online backlash to AI being used in the show's artwork though – and the tone of the 'show' is spot-on for this era of late-night chat shows.
David Dastmalchian – an actor who revels in weird roles – might seem like an odd fit for a clean-cut late-night host, but he pitches the performance with the right amount of charisma and cheese.
Unsurprisingly, we know that Jack is far from the persona he projects on his show. During the ad breaks, Late Night with the Devil cuts to black-and-white to show what happened behind-the-scenes, allowing Dastmalchian to let Jack's sinister side slip through and portray the desperation behind the façade.
It's one of Dastmalchian's strongest movie performances, but even he's outshone by talented newcomer Ingrid Torelli as Lilly. As you're lulled into believing you're watching a late-night show, Torelli can completely unsettle you by just staring directly into the camera as though she's looking into your soul.
Writers/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes – the duo behind riotous horror-comedy 100 Bloody Acres – largely keep the gore and ick factor to a minimum. Bar one brilliantly gross sequence involving worms (that also becomes a fun meta gag), the focus is on creeping unease and a sense of dread.
But they do let loose in a finale that could prove divisive as it's tonally distinct to the rest of the movie. All pretences that this was a real show go out the window as things get weird and bloody, Jack's demons truly coming home to roost in spectacular fashion.
It's a fittingly unique ending to Late Night with the Devil, one of the most inventive takes on found footage in years. Jack Delroy might not have been real, but the scares definitely are.
Late Night with the Devil is in cinemas now and arrives on Shudder on April 19.
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