Everybody loves an underdog. 

Whether it’s a scrappy independent horror movie, a talented but undersung character actor, or a new late-night talk show host going up against a pop culture juggernaut, we love to root for people who have the odds stacked against them. We love to see the little guy win. It balances the scales a bit, wresting just enough power from the Haves that it gives the Have Nots a little more hope in a world of increasingly stark disparities. Of course, this raises important questions that are bigger than, and slightly outside the scope of, this review: how do we define “underdog,” which underdogs do we root for, and who is “we” to begin with? Flattening these definitions allows the status quo to remain unchallenged; if, for example, your underdogs are always white, you might be less interested in redressing power imbalances than you think you are.

Late Night with the Devil could have been an interesting examination of power: who gets to wield it, what they have to do to get it, and who gets hurt in the process. Instead, it is a sloppy, dull movie that refuses to commit to its own format, aesthetic, or themes. Star David Dastmalchian, who is also an executive producer on the film, gives an admirable performance that I hope will bring him more lead roles. The film around him, though — which was written, directed, and edited by brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes and lensed by Matthew Temple — is largely a disappointment, gesturing half-heartedly at ideas that could have solidified into a great movie. 

Dastmalchian plays Jack Delroy, an upstart talk show host looking to take down the King of Late Night himself, Johnny Carson. Delroy’s show Night Owls is a strong contender, but it can never quite match The Tonight Show’s ratings. After his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig) dies unexpectedly from lung cancer, Jack’s ratings plummet, and he makes a last-ditch effort to save his show and his career. Live on Halloween night in 1977, Jack hosts an episode devoted to the occult, featuring special guest Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a 13-year-old girl supposedly possessed by a demon. When Jack convinces parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) to speak to the demon on the air, all hell breaks loose. 

After a comically long litany of production company logos, the film opens with a documentary prologue, as a narrator (the legendary Michael Ironside) describes Jack’s late-night rise and fall. The subject of the documentary is the infamous Halloween special “Late Night with the Devil,” which is purportedly presented in its entirety, using both the recovered broadcast and behind-the-scenes footage filmed during commercial breaks on that same night. 

This is where the film stumbles the most (from a technical perspective, at least). For a story that requires total immersion — as achieved by one of its most obvious influences, the far superior Ghostwatch —  Late Night with the Devil seems to care very little about adhering to the rules it sets for itself or capturing the period details of its setting. The blameless costuming department sets a high bar here, but the cinematography falls far short, and I will address the film’s use of generative A.I. for its interstitial art later in this review.

One of the most glaring issues that breaks the film’s immersion is the behind-the-scenes footage. So many inexplicable decisions take these scenes from what they should have been — moments that increase tension, modulate the story’s pacing, and flesh out characterization — and turn them into distractions that completely take the viewer out of the experience. They are shot in black and white, adopting the same artificial, grain-free sheen that makes the rest of the film look as little like a ‘70s talk show as possible. 

As I see it, there are two possible explanations for why the BTS footage was shot in black and white as opposed to color. The first is that color film would have been more expensive at the time, so footage that wasn’t even going to make it to air on an already struggling show would have been shot on the cheapest film stock available. However, if the Night Owls producers were cutting costs so much, why would they have at least two cameras and two camera operators devoted to behind-the-scenes footage at all? Bizarrely, there are shot-reverse shots within this BTS footage (during which we never see the other camera, even though it would have been visible as multiple camera operators ran around backstage during short filming breaks). It makes no sense, it looks far too modern, and it raises questions viewers shouldn’t be asking themselves. 

I’m not someone who usually notices or worries about minutiae such as these. I feel like a pontificating Cinema Sins acolyte for devoting an entire paragraph to the estimated number of camera operators involved in the behind-the-scenes footage of a TV show within a movie within a movie. I don’t care an inordinate amount about the details of futuristic space technology or the business practices of 1970s television networks in movies. If you tell me, “This is how it works,” I will generally accept that and move on, focusing instead on the story and the themes — on how the movie feels — rather than details I consider irrelevant to my enjoyment of a film. But if you tell me, “This is how it works,” you need to abide by your own logic. If your entire film hinges on situating me in a time and a place and keeping me there, you can’t undercut that effort at every turn and expect me to connect with your movie. 

The second possible explanation for the BTS footage being shot in black and white is to differentiate it from the on-air scenes. Context makes that screamingly obvious, though, which makes this possibility one of many examples of the Cairnes brothers appearing to lack confidence in their audience. Another example lies in the documentary prologue, which includes an extended section on Jack’s reported involvement in The Grove, a retreat for California “elites” (i.e., rich and powerful white men who meet up to discuss how to increase their wealth and power) and a thinly veiled allusion to the real-life Bohemian Grove. The documentary footage makes it clear that the arcane rituals practiced at The Grove have something to do with Jack’s TV success, which diminishes the impact of later “reveals” and deflates the tension the film tries to drum up as it positions professional skeptic Carmichael Haig (a wonderfully bloviating Ian Bliss) against Jack’s other guests, who try to defend their occult bona fides from his infuriatingly logical attacks. 

Much like the rest of the film’s half-baked ideas, the documentary prologue doesn’t go anywhere. The film simply ends with the conclusion of the live broadcast, leaving the movie with only half of its framing device. Once again, Late Night with the Devil can’t commit. The film either needs to figure out a way to work the exposition into the broadcast and/or BTS footage (ideally in a less heavy-handed way), or it needs to follow through with its documentary framework. What the viewer is left with feels unfinished and careless, making the movie an exercise in frustration. It is a string of could-have-been and should-have-been vignettes rather than a cohesive, thoughtful film. 

That brings us to the artificially intelligent elephant in the room. Concerns over the use of generative A.I. in interstitial images and possibly studio art led to the Cairnes brothers releasing a statement that they had used A.I. for three still images used as interstitials in the film’s fictional broadcast footage. They later spoke to Letterboxd about the controversy, seeming to double down on their decision to use technology that artists in separate cases have likened to plagiarism. It’s a disappointing stance from creators, particularly indie filmmakers. Rather than being a “minor” detail that mars an otherwise great film, though, it seems to be in keeping with Late Night with the Devil’s half measures. 

It all comes back to power. Jack is a white man with powerful connections who wants to move up in a world ruled by other white men with powerful connections. He does so largely at the expense of the women in his life: first his wife, and then Dr. Ross-Mitchell and Lilly. He bumps his sole Black guest — singer Cleo James (Nicole Chapman) — to make more time for Lilly, a young white girl. While, yes, a demonic possession on Halloween night is probably better for ratings than a musical act, his decision still speaks volumes about whose stories are prioritized and which audience members executives care about reaching. Pandering to fears of the occult, for example, centers conservative Christian values. But Late Night with the Devil doesn’t seem very interested in the Satanic Panic beyond using it for shock value (of which there is very little), nor does it care to explore with any depth or nuance the deals that powerful people make with the Devil. Dastmalchian does what he can, but Jack is just as flat and thinly sketched as the rest of the film, which tends to glance in the general direction of its themes without actually engaging with them.

There’s a great movie hiding somewhere in Late Night with the Devil, but it will take better conjurers than the Cairnes brothers appear to be to bring it out.