Sigh. There is nothing worse than a movie that does everything right...until it doesn't. Late Night With the Devil is one of those films. Its first right is its intriguing premise. A late night talk show host trying to catch Carson in the ratings decides to have a special Halloween show during sweeps week. He books three guests for the show. Christou is a psychic who claims to be able to talk with the spirits. This is intriguing considering that the host of of our show, Jack (played by the always great David Dastmalchian), has had a wife who has died of cancer just a little bit ago. The psychic seems to be a hoax but then something abnormal happens and he begins to projectile vomit all over the studio.
The second guest is a parapsychologist who brings a little girl with her who is the lone survivor of a satanic cult. Both claim there is a demon that resides inside the girl named Mr. Wriggles because he wriggles inside her brain.
The third guest is a former magician who now has become a skeptic who offers $100,000 to anyone who can offer irrefutable proof of the paranormal. He is on the show for one thing and one thing only. The point out how to other two guests are full of shit.
In addition to this there is the fact that Jack belongs to an exclusive group of men known as the Grove who perform secretive rituals in the woods, there are some suspicious looking men in costumes in the audience, and the producer of the show will do anything to get the rating up. All of this tension keeps building which is the second thing it does right.
All of this tension is framed within a found footage format which is the third thing that is done right. We will see the footage of the actual show in color. Then whenever it goes to commercial break, the behind the scenes footage is in black and white. It keeps alternating between these two, again building the constant tension.
That is why it is so disappointing when the payoff finally occurs. Like Longlegs and Maxxine, other movies this year that had intriguing premises but couldn't stick the landing, the payoff seems lazy. In fact, given the format the entire movie has been in until this point, the way part of the finale is presented to the audience actually doesn't make any sense as it is from the specific viewpoint of Jack rather than something cameras could have caught.
This is such a shame because up until this last 15 minutes everything else had been great. Other things that were right were the production, the performances, the script, and the direction. And then everything including the special effects goes off the rails. When the credits began to roll I thought of all of the missed opportunities that were never addressed. I know writing a good ending is incredibly difficult and these guys are good enough to make movies and I'm not. But I could think of at least half a dozen different ways to have ended this film better.
That being said I look forward to seeing more work from the brothers who wrote and directed the film, Colin and Cameron Cairnes. They definitely know how to direct a film and who knows, maybe next time they will be able to stick that landing.
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