“Late Night With The Devil”. Not really a movie movie, but the eyes have it…

Late Night With The Devil poster

I don’t normally post reviews on here, but I saw a preview of Late Night With The Devil earlier this week. It opens in UK and US cinemas today and it opens up a whole can of interesting worms. 

I guess the elevator pitch was something along the lines of The Exorcist meets The Blair Witch Project on a late-night US chat show – although ads are plugging it as Rosemary’s Baby meets Network.

The plotline is: In 1977 a live television broadcast goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into living rooms across the United States.

The title Late Night With The Devil explains the plot.

The idea is that you are watching a real videotape of a real late night TV chat show – Night Owls – which was broadcast live on Halloween Night, 31st October 1977. The transmitted sequences are in colour and the duration of the ad-breaks are filled with black & white documentary-like footage of what ‘actually’ went on off-screen (again in real time).

The Night Owls TV show you are watching throughout the film was supposedly in ‘also-ran’ competition with the Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

It is a good idea but I’m not really sure it is a movie movie, by which I mean it is not opened-up… 

Apart from an introductory set-up putting it into the context of the 1970s – and the ending – it is set entirely within a TV studio and takes place in real time.

So wide-screen spectacular vistas and big-scale it ain’t got: it’s more suited to be a TV movie than a movie movie. In theory that is bad. But this is more than counter balanced by the fact everything happens in real time (except for the intro and the ending).

What you see is “actually happening” and “actually unfolding” as you watch it. A real time plotline is almost always going to be more involving. The ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ which you need to watch the artificiality of normal screen plots and performances is less difficult because you appear to be watching reality unfold second-by-second as it happens.

Ironically, this – in my humble opinion – buggers up the end because, as I mentioned, the movie happens in real time EXCEPT for the introductory set-up and the ending. 

And we can’t, of course, talk about the ending.

Still, the rest of the ride is vivid and mind-grabbing.

The central talk show host is played by David Dastmalchian, who is very charismatic in a slightly creepy way.

David Dastmalchian in The Dark Knight

I mainly know his face as a bit-part policemen with piercing, haunted eyes in The Dark Knight Batman movie.

His face and eyes are once seen never forgotten.

He was also in The Suicide Squad, Bladerunner 2049 and the first Dune movie. 

Oh and Oppenheimer, but let’s only concentrate on watchable films.

David Dastmalchian’s performance in Late Night With The Devil is easily underestimated. It’s subtle, not showy, so it ain’t gonna get an Oscar. But it could lead on to much bigger parts for him. He pretty-much carries the film, although the central ‘devil child’ (Ingrid Torelli) has mesmerisingly staring eyes to rival his.

Ingrid Torelli and David Dastmalchian both have it…

The eyes have it.

Should you see it? Yes.

Should you see it on TV? Yes.

Should you see it in the cinema? Strangely, yes. 

I’m glad I saw it on the big screen.