Things go awry when Satan proves an unruly talk show guest in 2024's Late Night with the Devil. An amusing recreation of a '70s talk show is disturbed by Satanic horror elements in a pretty satisfying way.
David Dastmalchian plays Jack Delroy, the host of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, a late night talk show competing with The Tonight Show. The name Night Owls is hinted to have a relationship to some cult to which Jack belonged. It's a subtle element of the film riding a line between comedy and horror which I liked.
On the fateful Halloween night depicted, Jack's guests are a psychic, a magician sceptic similar to Penn Jillette, and a parapsychologist accompanied by a possessed little girl similar to Reagan from The Exorcist. Things start to get weird when the psychic makes some more accurate predictions than usual and suffers a sudden illness at the same time.
Dastmalchian is believable as a late night host but also keeps his reactions nicely subtle when things get weird, leaving the audience to wonder at his possible secret guilt. That's important in stories about Satanic possession. A cornerstone of that horror is Satan exploiting the hidden sins of his victims.
Directors Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes do a good job recreating some of the vibe of a '70s talk show with graphics and editing though sometimes it feels a bit too clean. But a truly accurate recreation may be impossible. The recreation is good enough to be creepy when things start to get weird.
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