Late Night with the Devil (Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes, 2023)

SPOILERS

 

I knew exactly how the hotly anticipated Late Night with the Devil would play out - fun windup/compelling concept, muddled ending. Most of the film purports to be a found-footage presentation of the October 31, 1977 episode of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, a late-night talk show in perpetual competition with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In the hopes of finally gaining a ratings edge over Carson, Delroy (David Dastmalchian, fantastic) dedicates the Halloween episode to the occult by having as guests parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her supposedly demon-possessed patient Lilly D'Abo (Ingrid Torelli). For a good hour, Late Night with the Devil stuns with its deep commitment to the concept complete with a complex backstory and impressive period work. 

As with 99.9% of horror films, though, co-directors and co-screenwriters Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes botch their hard-won conceptual triumph with a sloppy dénouement. Basic narrative filmmaking dictates that the protagonist has a goal which gets thwarted by the antagonist with their antithetical goal. Indeed, the Cairnes make it clear that Delroy will do anything to beat Carson. As a member of The Grove, a shadowy club of elites, Delroy has access to an enormous store of power. At the film's climax, we learn that The Grove is a satanic cabal with the ability to grant Delroy his wish of ratings victory. But in a Bad Twist Ending Theater-worthy ending, unbeknownst to Delroy, the price extracted for such glory is the death of his wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig).  

But while Delroy's motives are perfectly clear, The Grove remains shadowy indeed. Like too many horror villains, we don't know what they want. Who exactly are these people? There's an obvious reference to Bohemian Grove here so why not flesh out the concept a bit with some despots or capitalists with a political or societal axe to grind? Even more confusingly, if Delroy is indeed a Grove member in (one must presume) good standing, then why has the group extracted such a horrible price from him? Did The Grove get what they wanted? Is Delroy's despair and, given the implications of the sirens at the very end of the film, lifetime imprisonment a success? Is The Grove simply there to create evil? And if so, as I ask of so many horror films, how does this feel-bad ending make it any weightier or worthy of extended reflection than a feel-good ending?

Grade: B+