|Late Night with the Devil: Would YOU Keep the Cameras Rolling?

[Ambrose:] Picture this. It's Halloween night. 1977. You're home. You're in your pajamas. And the house is dark except for the glow of the television in front of you. And you've got the TV on because the kids are in bed and you need something to wind down, and there's this late night talk show on — nothing special, just a Carson knockoff, you know a second-tier guy with a slick jacket and a good smile. 

[Ambrose:] And it's the kind of show where the host makes slightly inappropriate jokes and you sort of chuckle even though you know you shouldn't. And then one of his guests — a psychic guy — starts losing it on camera. Like really losing it. And you think, okay, is this a bit? Is this part of the show? And then the lights flicker. And the psychic starts saying a name that doesn't belong to anyone in that studio.

[Jessica:] Hmmm interesting. Go on.

[Ambrose:] And the ratings climb… That's the whole movie right there.

[Jessica:] Now. The way you just said that, makes it more disturbing than what the actual movie is about.

[Ambrose:] Right?? Like the thing that makes your skin crawl before anything supernatural even happens is that the host keeps looking at the floor manager to check if they're still on the air.

[Jessica:] So, the thing that just happen to the psychic was basically a ratings bump?

[Ambrose:] It would sound like that, right? But that’s Late Night with the Devil. Which is what we’re here to talk about tonight.

[Jessica:] Oh, I have thoughts.

[Ambrose:] You always have thoughts.

[Jessica:] Hey, I have what is called opinions.

[Ambrose:] And your opinions are very valid…Sometimes…So okay. Let's set this up properly. Late Night with the Devil. 2023 or 2024, depending on how you count it. It premiered at SXSW Festivals in March 2023, then got a proper U.S. theatrical release in March 2024 through IFC Films. Written and directed by the Cairnes brothers, Colin and Cameron.

[Ambrose:] Which was an Australian production, even though it's dressed head to toe like an American 1970s television. And the runtime is about 93 minutes. With a R rating.

[Jessica:] And then it hits Shudder. Which is where a lot of people ended up seeing it.

[Ambrose:] Yeah, and we'll talk about what happened on Shudder because the numbers on this thing are actually wild for what it is.

[Jessica:] But first… can we just say what kind of movie this is? Because I feel like people either went in totally blind and were surprised, or they went in expecting one thing and got something a little more layered.

[Ambrose:] Yeah, so. The pitch sounds simple. Found footage — sort of. Faux archival television. It's presented as a recently discovered master recording of a live Halloween special from a fictional 1977 late night talk show called Night Owls. And the host is Jack Delroy. Now, think Johnny Carson if Johnny Carson was just slightly more desperate and slightly more compromised. And the special goes very… very… wrong.

[Jessica:] Hang on for a second. It’s not just “Psychic chaos on TV.” That’s the important thing.

[Ambrose:] It's really not. And I think that's what separates it from being just a gimmick. The premise is hooky as hell…no pun intended — but the movie underneath the premise is about grief and ambition and what you're willing to sacrifice to stay visible. It just wraps all of that in a fake broadcast and some genuinely unnerving possession stuff.

[Jessica:] And the core of this episode — and honestly the core of the movie — is that the scariest thing on screen isn't the demon. It's the guy who lets it in because he needs the ratings.

[Ambrose:] That's it exactly. That's the whole thing.

[Jessica:] Okay. So take us into this.

[Ambrose:] Alright. So we need to start with Jack, because Jack is everything. David Dastmalchian plays him, and I want to give that performance its kudos because it is the load-bearing wall of this entire film. If David doesn't work, nothing works. And he works so well.

[Jessica:] Oh yeah. He’s been one of those "oh that guy" actors for ages.

[Ambrose:] You mean, for years! You know him, you've seen him in a hundred things, he's always the weird guy in the corner doing something interesting in like three minutes of screen time. And then this comes along and suddenly he's carrying a whole movie on his back.

[Jessica:] And let’s be honest. It’s not a small movie to carry.

[Ambrose:] No. Because Jack Delroy is a complicated person. He's charming — like, actually charming, in the way late night hosts need to be, where you kind of want to like him even when your gut says don't trust him. 

[Ambrose:] But underneath that there's this grief he's been sitting on. His wife Madeleine died of lung cancer, and after that his show just kind of... stalled. And it never fully recovered. And you can see it on him. There's this hollowness behind the smile that Dastmalchian plays so well.

[Jessica:] And the movie makes a point of showing you that Jack is aware of the hollow. And he's not oblivious to it. He just keeps filling it with work.

[Ambrose:] And also with audience approval, and ratings. And with the performance of being okay on camera.

[Jessica:] Which makes everything that follows horrifying for very specific reasons.

[Ambrose:] Right. So. The Halloween special. Jack has booked this lineup designed to generate maximum chaos, because that's what desperate late-night hosts do. 

[Ambrose:] He’s got a psychic named Christou, a skeptic debunker named Carmichael Haig — who is delightfully smug and a parapsychologist called June Ross-Mitchell, and June's young subject, this girl named Lilly. 

[Ambrose:] And Lilly is the survivor of this satanic cult mass death. And she’s allegedly possessed by a demon that she calls “Mr Wriggles,” and honestly just the name Mr. Wriggles should tell you that this movie has a sense of humor about itself even when it’s being genuinely creepy.

[Jessica:] Oh, Mr. Wriggles is not the name of a demon that respects your autonomy.

[Ambrose:] No. It's the name of a demon that thinks the whole thing is kind of funny.

[Jessica:] Okay, but let’s talk about Lilly, because I can’t stop thinking about her.

[Ambrose:] Oh okay. So, Lilly is played by Ingrid Torelli, and she was still a teenager when they cast her. And the thing that sold the directors on her…Well, one of the main things, was her stare. Because she had this way of just looking almost directly into the camera. Like not quite at you, not quite through you, but somewhere in between.

[Jessica:] It’s like she is violating something. Like a film grammar rule you didn’t know existed until someone breaks it.

[Ambrose:] That’s completely it. It’s so wrong in a way your brain recognizes it before you can explain why. Because normal screen performances are built around this shared agreement that the fourth wall exists. And she just…doesn’t honor that agreement. And the directors leaned into it on purpose.

[Jessica:] Which is such a smart craft choice.

[Ambrose:] It’s really smart. And it pays off all the way through the film because every time she's on screen there's this low-level wrongness humming underneath whatever else is happening. You can't take your eyes off her and you also kind of want to look away and both of those things are happening at the same time.

[Jessica:] And that's the sweet spot for horror performance.

[Ambrose:] Correct. It’s the whole thing. And the rest of the cast is pulling their weight too. Laura Gordon as June is doing a lot of heavy lifting in a different direction — she's playing someone who is legitimately trying to protect this kid, who knows things are wrong, who has actual professional stakes in how this evening goes. She's not there for the show. And you feel the distinction between her and everyone else in that studio.

[Jessica:] So she's the only person in the building whose first priority isn't the broadcast.

[Ambrose:] Exactly. And Ian Bliss as Carmichael Haig is doing something equally specific. Because he’s playing smug skepticism with this layer of theatrical contempt underneath it. Like he doesn't just think the psychic is fake. He finds the whole enterprise embarrassing. He's one of those debunkers who is so confident in his own framework that he can't actually see what's in front of him.

[Jessica:] Which makes him the most dangerous person in the room.

[Ambrose:] Yes, but we’ll come back to that. And then you got Michael Ironside narrating the opening. I mean come one, you hired Michael Ironside to narrate your movie. And let’s make this very clear, the audience immediately understands that what they are about to see is not going to be fun in a cute way.

[Jessica:] Oh you are so right. Because Michael Ironside’s voice is your warning label.

[Ambrose:] It really is.

[Jessica:] Okay so the show starts. Now walk us through that.

[Ambrose:] Okay, the show starts and immediately Christou — the psychic — starts picking up on something. The movie does this thing really well where it gives you the "is this real or is this a bit?" tension right away, because obviously a talk show in 1977 booking a psychic is already campy. 

[Ambrose:] You come to expect some level of performance. You expect Jack to be in on it. But Christou starts pulling on something that feels different. He says a name — "Minnie" — a name that nobody should know, a name that means something very specific and private to Jack. And then he starts getting violently ill on camera.

[Jessica:] And the best part is the production doesn’t cut away.

[Ambrose:] Nope. The production doesn't cut away. Which is the whole thing. Because Jack has a decision in that moment — cut to commercial, take a break, end the segment. But, instead he keeps the camera rolling because the ratings are up.

[Jessica:] And that's not metaphorical.

[Ambrose:] No. It’s not metaphorical at all. Because the floor manager is literally showing him the number. People are calling in. And Jack nods and keeps going.

[Jessica:] And here’s the crazy part about this whole thing. He watches someone who might be having a genuine supernatural collapse and his first thought is to keep the feed live.

[Ambrose:] Yes, that was his first thought. Why because it’s great television.

[Jessica:] And great television gives you great ratings..

[Ambrose:] And then Christou dies. But not on camera, no he dies later that night. And the movie just…keeps going, because so does the broadcast. There’s this brief moment of “we’ve received word,” and then back to the special. Because hey what are you gonna do? There still more guests.

[Jessica:] Oh my god. This movie is just insane.

[Ambrose:] It's very insane. But, in the best way. So next up is Carmichael Haig, the debunker. And I love Carmichael because he's doing something really useful for the movie — he's the voice of rational skepticism but he's playing it so smugly and condescendingly that you actually don't want him to be right, even when his explanations are plausible.

[Jessica:] Yeah, and he’s the guy who is maybe correct but makes you root against him anyway.

[Ambrose:] So, Ian Bliss plays him and there's this very specific texture to the performance. Because Carmichael doesn't just think the psychic was faking. He finds the whole enterprise embarrassing. Because he's one of those debunkers who has decided that the most intelligent position in any room is contempt. He doesn't want to understand what happened to Christou, he wants to explain it away so everyone can stop taking it seriously.

[Jessica:] And the funny part is June can barely stand him.

[Ambrose:] Oh I know what you mean? She can barely look at him. Which is interesting because she's a scientist too — she's rigorous, she keeps records, she has published work — but she and Carmichael are fundamentally doing different things. His goal is demolition. Hers is understanding. And he mistakes those for the same thing.

[Jessica:] And the show keeps them in the same room because that tension is good television.

[Ambrose:] Oh, everything on Night Owls is good television until it isn’t. And his segment is where the movie does one of it’s best tricks. So picture this. He does this hypnosis bit with an audience member, and that bit is designed to demonstrate how suggestion can make you see things that aren’t really there.

[Ambrose:] And the best part is the audience, including the camera audience, and us. We all appear to see something genuinely horrific. We all see a worm-like parasite erupting from someone’s body.

[Jessica:] And that was truly horrifying for sure. But didn’t he say he made all of us see it through suggestion?

[Ambrose:] Kind of. He said it was mass hypnosis. And that he manufactured the illusion. And the funny part is the audience sort of accepts this, even though the footage looks completely real. And in that moment the movie had done something really clever. It made you genuinely unsure whether the film’s rules allow for this supernatural event, or whether everything can be explained away.

[Jessica:] Now that is just crazy. It shifts the floor right under you.

[Ambrose:] And then it never gives it back. Because right when you've gotten comfortable with "okay, maybe this is all just suggestion and performance," Lilly comes out.

[Jessica:] Oh yeah we can not forget about….Lilly.

[Ambrose:] So, June brings Lilly out, and she’s trying to do this responsibly. Because you know, June is this parapsychologist, she’s written papers on this, and she’s not some kind of carnival act — No, she wants to really help Lilly. She wants to demonstrate that what’s happening to this kid is real, and she’s visibly uncomfortable with this kind of format. Like she knows she’s on a talk show and she knows talk shows eat things alive.

[Jessica:] And she's right to be uncomfortable.

[Ambrose:] Yes, she is. Because the moment Lilly gets in front of that audience, that’s when things start to slide sideway. Objects move. People react strangely. And that glossy TV surface. You know the one in which the Cairnes brothers have spent the whole movie building up so perfectly…Starts cracking. And Lilly does something that June didn’t script and didn’t authorize.

[Jessica:] And here’s the thing, she's not performing.

[Ambrose:] No, she’s not. And there’s this horrible tension where June is trying to professionally contain the situation and keep Lilly safe. And Jack is… NOT helping with that.

[Jessica:] Of course he’s not, because he’s watching the floor manager show him the numbers.

[Ambrose:] Exactly. Because Jack is more concerned abut his numbers. And I need to talk about Christou’s collapse for another second because it’s the movie’s first real “this is not a bit” moment and the film plays it perfectly.

[Ambrose:] Fayssal Bazzi plays Christou and there’s something specific he does. The performer in him keeps trying to stay on brand even as the real person underneath is clearly terrified of whatever he’s touched. And you can see the tension between those two things happening simultaneously. Because he’s still trying to be a talk show psychic while also being a man who has just touched something he cannot explain and cannot put back.

[Jessica:] And the crazy part is Jack watches all of this and just keeps rolling.

[Ambrose:] And he thinks this is incredible television. Which it is. It is incredible television. And that's the whole trap. The horror doesn't look like horror from the outside — it looks like a ratings winner.

[Jessica:] And the numbers going up is the scariest shot in the film.

[Ambrose:] Honestly maybe. Because we've been trained by horror movies to look for the monster. We know what scary is supposed to look like. And the movie keeps pointing at this guy holding up a clipboard with a big number on it and saying — no, and that's the thing you should be afraid of. The willingness to keep the camera on whatever is happening because people are watching.

[Jessica:] Okay, that’s just a bit insane to even think about. But okay. Walk us through the final act.

[Ambrose:] So. Technically this is FOUND footage, but it doesn’t work the way found footage usually works. It doesn’t use shakiness and handheld chaos to manufacture fear. No, it uses the opposite. It’s composed. Steady. And it looks exactly like television was suppose to look like in 1977. It’s flat, professional, and controlled. And the horror comes from watching things that are genuinely wrong inside of that controlled frame. The grammar of television says everything is fine. The content says it is absolutely not.

[Jessica:] Because the medium is lying.

[Ambrose:] No. The medium is doing what television always does — making everything look manageable even when it isn't. And the Cairnes brothers use that so deliberately. You trust the frame because it looks professional. You give it the same half-attention you'd give a real broadcast. And then it gets under your skin before you realize you've let it in.

[Jessica:] So, it’s a long con.

[Ambrose:] It really is. So. Lilly escalates. And the demonic force starts doing things the show can’t explain away. And then we have the final act. And this is where the movie either wins you or loses you, because there are two valid readings of what happens and the film is intentional about not resolving them.

[Jessica:] So, okay what are the two readings?

[Ambrose:] Okay so. The movie starts cutting in "playback" footage — black and white behind-the-scenes material that wasn't part of the live broadcast. And in that footage there are details that suggest Jack knew more than he was letting on. There's this organization called The Grove. It’s an occult men's group. And the implication builds that Jack's success, you know his whole career, his rise to the top, was connected to some kind of bargain. A Faustian deal. And Madeleine — who we keep seeing in these fragmented hallucinations Jack is having — may have been the price.

[Jessica:] So she was what he traded for?

[Ambrose:] Or that's one reading. And the other reading is that Jack is a man who has been sitting on unprocessed grief for years, who is now sleep-deprived and traumatized by everything that's happened in his studio tonight, and who has essentially lost his grip on reality. And the demon — if there is a demon — is exploiting that.

[Jessica:] Ok. So, the horror is his own mind then?

[Ambrose:] Or the horror is real and he invited it in. Or both. But the climax is Jack stabbing what he believes is an apparition of Madeleine, and when the illusion breaks — if it really was an illusion — he has just stabbed Lilly on live television. And then he just sits there, muttering the show's sign-off line. And the police come.

[Jessica:] Wow! That is horrible.

[Ambrose:] It's so horrible. And the Cairnes brothers have said explicitly that they didn't want to tie it up cleanly. They wanted multiple valid readings. Which honestly I respect because so many horror movies in this mode feel pressure to explain themselves in the final ten minutes and they give you this disappointing "here's what really happened" that's never as scary as the ambiguity.

[Jessica:] And the answer is always worse than the question.

[Ambrose:] Always. And this movie is smart enough to know that.

[Jessica:] Okay. Can we talk about the craft for a second? Because this film's production story is genuinely interesting and I don't want to just blow past it.

[Ambrose:] Oh Please, go for it.

[Jessica:] So, the Cairnes brothers said the script had been around for like ten years in the making. They shot it in Melbourne on a soundstage, built the full Night Owls set including audience seating, and did the whole thing in about twenty days…Yeah you heard that right… Twenty days!

[Ambrose:] Wow. Twenty days. That’s just insane to think about.

[Jessica:] And they shot with three cameras the entire time, almost like they were actually making a live broadcast. They used a Sony Venice in 4K but then degraded it in post to look like old television.

[Ambrose:] Which is where some of the most interesting work happens. Because the color grading team was doing things like chromatic aberration, RGB misalignment, lens distortion. These were techniques designed to make the footage feel like it came out of a three-tube television camera from the 1970s.

[Jessica:] And they shot it intentionally "badly."

[Ambrose:] But that's my favorite production detail. "That shot was terrible" became a compliment on set, because terrible meant period-accurate. They embraced awkward framing, clunky zooms, too-deep focus. Everything that would get you fired on a modern production was exactly right for this one.

[Jessica:] And the Visual effects budget was apparently around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

[Ambrose:] Which is —

[Jessica:] Insane. For what this movie looks like.

[Ambrose:] And the producer reportedly handled a huge chunk of the visual effects himself. The movie has something like three hundred visual effects shots. And on that budget. That’s insane.

[Jessica:] And then the Dastmalchian thing — can you talk about how he got the role?

[Ambrose:] Oh right. So the Cairnes brothers found him through a Fangoria piece he had written about old-school horror hosts. He was already thinking deeply about late-night television culture and horror presentation before the movie existed. 

[Ambrose:] And they liked that he had genuine emotional vulnerability alongside the vintage-TV energy. He came in with references — Carson, Letterman, Phil Donahue, Morton Downey Jr. — and he improvised at least one regional horror host joke on set.

[Jessica:] So, he wasn't playing dress-up?

[Ambrose:] No. He wasn't playing dress-up. He was someone who had already done the internal work on this character type before he was even cast. And you feel that. The performance doesn't feel like an impression or a period costume. It feels inhabited.

[Jessica:] Alright. Let's go under the surface. What is this movie actually about?

[Ambrose:] Okay. So. The most obvious read is fame as a deal with the devil. And the movie pretty explicitly invites that read — there's the Grove, there's the bargain, there's the implication that Jack's whole career cost something he didn't fully understand. But the directors have connected the film to Network and The King of Comedy, which tells you they're thinking about it as performance satire as much as possession horror.

[Jessica:] So, it’s in the same conversation with those type of films, but in a very interesting way.

[Ambrose:] Right. Because those films are also about men who need the audience. And who have built their identity around being watched. And what happens when the need for that validation becomes so infectious  that it starts eating everything else. 

[Ambrose:] Take for instance the movie Network. It’s about a news anchor who has a breakdown on live television and the network keeps him on air because it's good for ratings. The King of Comedy is about a man who is so desperate to be famous that he kidnaps a talk show host. And Late Night with the Devil fits right in that tradition — except it adds the actual devil.

[Jessica:] Which is not a subtle metaphor.

[Ambrose:] No. It’s not subtle but it's not supposed to be. And I think that's fine because the movie earns it. It doesn't pretend the Faustian angle is clever and surprising. It just commits to it and executes it well.

[Jessica:] And then there’s  grief.

[Ambrose:] Yeah. Dastmalchian talked about Jack as somebody whose fatal flaw is untreated sorrow. And he buries the loss of Madeleine under work and polish and audience approval. And the horror of the film isn't just "demon on television." It's a man who turned his grief into content and paid for it.

[Jessica:] And there’s something really specific and uncomfortable about that in 2024. Because the movie depicts this machinery of turning someone’s private pain into a public spectacle and then calls it entertainment.

[Ambrose:] That is such a valid point right there. And jack keeps framing Madeleine’s death as part of his narrative. And he brings it up on the special in a way that’s clearly calculated to create sympathy. And the film never lets him fully off the hook for that.

[Jessica:] Even if he loved her genuinely.

[Ambrose:] Right. Which I think he did. Which makes it worse. Because it's not a story about a cynical man who never cared. It's a story about a man who cared so much that the loss broke him, and then he coped by turning the brokenness into a performance. Which is a very human thing to do and also a very ugly thing to do.

[Jessica:] And then there's the television-as-haunted-medium thing.

[Ambrose:] Which is such a fun conversation. Because Dastmalchian raised the point to where the movie connects possession to mass media. You know the way television takes hold of your collective conscious, and the way you open your home to it every night without even thinking about what you’re inviting in. The movie uses the screen as a portal. And the broadcast as the vector.

[Jessica:] Which then connects to every horror you can imagine.

[Ambrose:] Right. Think of videodrome, pulse, and even the ring. Because the idea that the thing coming through the screen is using the medium to get to you. But what Late Night with the Devil does differently is it sets this in 1977, which is pre-panic but right in the middle of this cultural moment where televised occult fascination was a legitimate mainstream entertainment format.

[Ambrose:] Talk shows where booking psychics. It was the Exorcist-era where Satanism hysteria was building. The line between spiritual spectacle and reality television was very blurry back then.

[Jessica:] And the movie was set right at the edge of that moment.

[Ambrose:] And Night Owls was a tiny piece of that machine. Because Jack was not an anomaly. He’s doing what everyone else was doing. The only problem was Jack got the demon that came with it.

[Jessica:] Exactly. And the audience at home watching was caught in the middle of it all.

[Ambrose:] They were. And the numbers was showing it. Because nobody was changing the channel. Which is the movie’s most pointed observation, I think. We keep watching, and we keep the feed alive even when we know something’s wrong.

[Jessica:] Which brings me to the question? The survival check.

[Ambrose:] Yes. Okay. Okay so. You at home watching the live Halloween special from your living room back in 1977. And things just start to go wrong in every way possible. Do you think you would survive this?

[Jessica:] Oh I’d survive definitely. Because I would change the channel Immediately.

[Ambrose:] Oh come on that’s cheating.

[Jessica:] Uh, not it’s not. It’s a television set. And there are other channels. I’d switch it to something else when everything goes south. I’m not stupid.

[Ambrose:] But the whole point is your watching!

[Jessica:] Then I stop watching. Because I have the power. I’m not in the studio. So I can change the channel.

[Ambrose:] Okay fine, fine. You're in the studio. And you're a floor manager. What do you do now?

[Jessica:] I quit. I quit so fast your head would spin. Because as soon as Christou starts unraveling. I’m just handing my headset to someone and I leave immediately.

[Ambrose:] So, you just abandon the broadcast.

[Jessica:] Yeah. I go home. It's Halloween. I go home, I turn off the television, and I go to bed. What about you?

[Ambrose:] Okay here's the honest answer. I don’t survive. I’m Jack. And I see the floor manager showing me the number and I keep the cameras rolling. Because I fully succumb to the hubris of "this is incredible content, nothing bad could come from this."

[Jessica:] Wait a minute. Your telling me that you would genuinely weigh the ratings against the demon.

[Ambrose:] I would absolutely weigh the ratings against the demon and I would make the wrong call. This is why Ambrose would not survive horror movies. Because I have zero survival instinct, but I have very high chaos tolerance.

[Jessica:] WOW! I was not expecting that from you…Okay what about you listening right now. How would you survive Late Night with the Devil?

[Ambrose:] Hold up. Before you answer that question. Here are some scenarios for you to consider first.

[Jessica:] Ok. There’s rules now?

[Ambrose:] Yes. And here’s rule one: if the psychic starts naming people who should not be nameable, Do you get up and leave?

[Ambrose:] Rule two: Do you believe that Carmichael Haig is the most dangerous person in the room. Because he makes you feel safe when you shouldn’t.

[Ambrose:] Rule three: You see how scared June looks. But keep in mind she’s a parapsychologist who has made her career in studying this stuff. Now, knowing all of this. Do you wait around to find out what she is scared of.

[Jessica:] Oh alright. So here’s rule number four: If you notice that the host is checking the ratings instead of checking on his injured guest? Do you think your in a bad place and should you get out of there?

[Ambrose:] And here’s a little hint on rule number four. The ratings are the red flag. Because they are always the red flag.

[Jessica:] Perfect. Let us know on our social media accounts either Facebook or Instagram at the thing about films… Now what is your final thoughts?

[Ambrose:] Yeah, but before I get to my final thoughts on this movie. I really think we should talk about the A.I. thing because it came up and I think it’s worth a minute of your time. So shortly before the U.S. release, people started to notice that a few of the interstitial title card images looked a bit like they have been generated by A.I. And that sparked a real backlash online, especially because this was right in the middle of the industry conversation about A.I. and creative labor. But I will say this, the directors did acknowledge it…they said they’d did experiment with A.I. for the three still images and they edited them further.

[Jessica:] And their defense was basically "we're a tiny budget production and nobody lost a job over three title cards."

[Ambrose:] Which some people accepted and some people didn't. And I get both reactions. The frustrating part is that this is a movie made with enormous craft and care, and those images just undercut the goodwill a little. Not fatally. But noticeably.

[Jessica:] And It’s definitely a conversation worth having and then moving past.

[Ambrose:] Yeah. Because it doesn't change what the movie is… Okay, now my final thoughts.

[Jessica:] Okay. Go for it.

[Ambrose:] Alright. Late Night with the Devil hit theaters in March of 2024 and it had an extraordinary run for what it was. It was IFC’s biggest theatrical launch at the time. It pulled in about ten million domestically and seventeen million worldwide. But then it landed on Shudder and reportedly became the biggest opening weekend Shudder had ever seen. And was later described as the most-watched, biggest acquisition-driving film in the history of both Shudder and AMC plus. Now for a weird little original horror movie built around a fake 1970s talk show. That is a wild story.

[Jessica:] And critics loved it too. Ninety-seven percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Ambrose:] And it cleaned up at the genre awards. It got best feature at Toronto After Dark, Fangoria Chainsaw Awards for screenplay and lead performance, and fourteen Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts nominations. And Dastmalchian won Best Actor from the Kansas City Film Critics Circle. Let’s not forget about the Saturn Award win for Best Independent Film. The movie got recognized as something special, and not just something fun.

[Jessica:] Which brings me to the question of who is this movie really for?

[Ambrose:] Your asking who's it for?

[Jessica:] Yeah. Is it for the horror fan who responds to period recreations, faux archival stuff, or the whole ‘forbidden footage you were never supposed to see’ format. Is it a must. Is it a Immediately. Is it a do not wait kind of movie for a horror fan?

[Ambrose:] Okay. If you like possession horror, but want it to have something going on underneath the surface. This is absolutely for you.

[Ambrose::] Now. If you are someone who needs your horror to be purely genre. You know just scares, monsters, and straightforward. You might bounce off it a little. Because it’s doing a lot of things at once.

[Ambrose:] And it would require some patience in the first act while it’s establishing the period illusion. But once it locks in, it doesn’t  let you go.

[Jessica:] So, is it a watch-alone movie or a watch-with-friends movie?

[Ambrose:] Oh, alone. Definitely alone, and preferably in the dark, with just the TV on. Which kind of sounds obvious, but it’s the correct way to watch it. Because the whole atmosphere depends on you buying the broadcast fiction, and you buy it easier when it’s just you and the screen.

[Jessica:] And the reason this movie sticks…the reason people are still talking about it is because it’s not a novelty item. The gimmick is real, but the movie underneath it is sad. Like genuinely, quietly sad. And that sadness is what keeps it from just being a clever party trick.

[Ambrose:] And Jack Delroy is a man who traded everything for fame and couldn't even name the exact moment he made the deal. And that's scarier than any demon.

[Jessica:] And what’s even scarier then that. Most of US don’t know exactly when we made our deals either.

[Ambrose:] Oooh that got dark quick.

[Jessica:] What did you expect. It’s a horror podcast, Ambrose. You know we live here.

[Ambrose:] Fair enough. And On that note — the ratings climbed, the cameras kept rolling, and Late Night with the Devil is a damn good film.

[Jessica:] It sure is. 

[Ambrose:] Okay. I think we need to just give our ratings on this movie and let the listeners know if they should watch this movie or not…What do you think about that?

[Jessica:] Oh I love it.

[Ambrose:] Okay then. It’s time to head on down to the Critic’s Crypt.

[Jessica:] Lead the way Crypt Boy!

[Ambrose:] Okay, so I just want to say…and I’m going to look straight at you when I say it. But there’s a candle behind you that has been slowly tilting towards your hair ever since we got down here. And I’ve been standing here watching it happen and doing nothing to stop it…just thought you like to know.

[Jessica:] You are such an ass. Do you know that?

[Ambrose:] I know that. But I was just curious to see how it would of played out.

[Jessica:] You were curious to see if I would catch on fire?

[Ambrose:] I mean…yeah. A little. But isn’t that what Late Night with the Devil energy is all about? Just watching something awful unfold and not stopping it.

[Jessica:] Oh that’s actually a good way of thinking. Because your right. So, let’s talk about this movie in a way that only we can.

[Ambrose:] Okay then. Let’s get into it.

[Jessica:] Okay. Let’s first start off with David Dastmalchian. Because I’m sorry, that man carried this entire movie on his back and he made it look effortless.

[Ambrose:] Oh completely. He's doing like four different things at once the whole time. He's playing a host who's performing charm, but underneath that there's this grief he's trying to keep buried, and then on top of all of that he's slowly losing his grip on what's real — and you can see all three of those layers at the same time. That’s a lot.

[Jessica:] And none of it feels like acting. He's not announcing "I am unraveling now." It just... happens.

[Ambrose:] And the smile never quite reaches the eyes and it works for the whole movie. Because it's creepy in a way that sneaks up on you.

[Jessica:] Oh definitely. Okay my other thing and I feel like a lot of people slept on this…was the format itself. That found footage conceit where it frames as a recovered broadcast footage. Was so smart, because it gives everything this surface-level of legitimacy that makes the horror land a bit harder then normal.

[Ambrose:] Yes! Because you're watching it the same way the studio audience is watching it. You're in the same position as those people who can't tell if this is a bit or if something is actually wrong. And the camera stays where a live TV camera would stay. It's not going where horror cameras go. That restraint is doing so much work.

[Jessica:] Oh my god. Exactly. The restraint! That's the word. This movie is restrained in exactly the right moments and then it just — lets go.

[Ambrose:] And when it does let go… it REALLY lets go. That third act is wild.

[Jessica:] Wild is an understatement.

[Ambrose:] Okay. So. What bugged you. Because I have one thing and I need to see if it matches yours.

[Jessica:] The interstitial segments. The fake commercials and the bumper cards between segments — I think they were trying to break up the tension and add to the authenticity but for me they killed some of the momentum in the middle section.

[Ambrose:] Okay so that's not my thing but I get it. Like the first one is charming and then by the third one you're a little like, okay, yes, I believe it's a TV show, we can move on.

[Jessica:] Yeah it's doing the job but maybe doing it one time too many.

[Ambrose:] Okay. But my thing, and this is minor. Is that the Christou segment, the psychic segment early on, sets up this really interesting thread about grief and about Jack's wife that I wanted more of. And I think the movie kind of drops it to get to the bigger horror stuff.

[Jessica:] Okay that's fair. It's there in Dastmalchian's performance but it's not quite on the page the way it could be.

[Ambrose:] Right, like they knew what the emotional core was but they were in a hurry to get to the possession stuff.

[Jessica:] Which is great possession stuff, to be clear.

[Ambrose:] Oh absolutely. Ingrid Torelli as Lilly is terrifying in a way that doesn't feel like regular horror movie terrifying. She's doing something weird with her physicality that I couldn't quite name and that bothered me, but in the best way.

[Jessica:] Oh you are so right on that one. And the one thing I noticed and couldn’t stop noticing it. Was she barely blinks. Every time the camera would pan over on to her face she just sat there cold and emotionless the whole time.

[Ambrose:] Right?! And by the time the finale hits and everything goes sideways, you've been unsettled by her for the whole movie without fully understanding why.

[Jessica:] And that what makes this movie so great. Because everyone behind this movie knew exactly what they were doing.

[Ambrose:] Okay. Enough said let me tell you my rating. Because I really need you to hear it.

[Jessica:] ok then. What is your rating?

[Ambrose:] Five out of Five Coffins. And I want to be clear I don’t normally give these kind of movies Five coffins. Because most of the type they are shot in such a cheesy way.

[Jessica:] You said that so seriously. Like you were confessing something.

[Ambrose:] That’s because I’m be genuine here. The performance, the format, the restraint, and the way it uses found footage without being lazy about it. So yeah it earns that rating.

[Jessica:] Okay. Okay, I get it. Now drumroll because you are going to shocked on what I’m going to give it [short pause] I’m also giving it a five out of five coffins to…I know shocker right there.

[Ambrose:] Wait really?

[Jessica:] Yeah. It got me. I don't want to admit how much it got me but it did.

Ambrose: Wow. I am shocked. Because I didn’t think you liked it.

[Jessica:] Really. Why?

[Ambrose:] Well, every time I wanted to talk to you about it. You kinda of gave me the impression that you didn’t like it.

[Jessica:] Okay. What were you smoking. Because I don’t ever remember giving off that kind of vibe to you.

[Ambrose:] Hmmm. Okay maybe I was thinking of something else then.

[Jessica:] You must of been. Because I couldn’t wait to talk to you about this movie.

[Ambrose:] Really now. Wow. I don’t know what came over me.

[Jessica:] Yeah, well don’t let it happen again Crypt Boy! Let’s get out of here before this place eats more of your brain cells.

[Ambrose:] Alright I’m with you on that one.

[Jessica:] Lead the way Crypt Boy!

[Ambrose:] Okay, sooo, we just did Late Night with the Devil...

[Jessica:] And I feel like I need to sit in a lit room for a while. Like, just... fluorescent lights. Nothing atmospheric.

[Ambrose:] Yeah, I feel you on that. No candles for me tonight. No static. No talk show music playing from somewhere I can't identify.

[Jessica:] Yeah, I feel the same. It will be a while before I light another candle or watch another Late Night talk show.

[Ambrose:] I can’t argue with you on that one. But hey, if you like what we do let us know and if your a fan of our show drop us a message on our social media at the thing about films and let us know.

[Jessica:] We are always here. That's kind of unsettling when you say it out loud.

[Ambrose:] It really is.

[Jessica:] Okay but before we go — Jack Delroy just wanted ratings. That's it. That's the whole tragedy.

[Ambrose:] He wanted ratings and he got them. Just... not the kind that keep your soul intact.

[Jessica:] Was worth it? That’s debatable.

[Ambrose:] Alright, we'll see you next time.

[Jessica:] Bye!

[Ambrose:] Byeeee!