Late Night with the Devil

Official Australian release date: 11/4/24. Viewed: 21/4/24.
Directors: Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes
Actors: David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Rhys Auteri
Genre: Horror
Rating: MA

‘Late Night with the Devil’ is almost a “bottle episode”, taking place on a TV set of a fictional late night talk show called “Night Owls” on Halloween 1977, where host Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian) and his offsider Gus (Auteri) compete for ratings against Johnny Carson. The film makes great use of grainy 4:3 footage to show that it’s the 70s, and a brief intro sets up what’s happened to Jack and his wife Maddie (Haig) over the past few years.

Given it’s Halloween, the show’s guests are a psychic, Christou (Bazzi), a former magician and now-sceptic, Carmichael (Bliss), a parapsychologist, June (Gordon) and her teenage, potentially-possessed subject, Lilly (Torelli). The way the film follows the making of the TV show is a great concept and having the screen widen and change to black-and-white for the behind-the-scenes sections during ad-breaks is a great story-telling device. It also keeps the momentum up, as things don’t go horribly wrong all at once, but gradually get weirder/stranger…

It all moves fast at only 90min long, and is great to see Australian directors doing well (this is better than ‘100 Bloody Acres’ – filmed in Melbourne, with a majority-Aussie cast. The set design and fashion is spot on and the tone, with moments of humour an suspense well executed and balanced. Dastmalchian is great and all the cast is strong. Last 15min or so is pretty crazy and not at all predictable!

Overall: Unique and enjoyable horror premise

Gav's Rating: 4 stars

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Official Australian release date: 21/3/24. Viewed: 19/4/24.
Director: Gil Kenan
Actors: Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard
Genre: Sci-Fi / Comedy
Rating: PG

‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ is technically ‘Ghostbusters’ 5, and a direct sequel to 2021’s ‘Afterlife’, which introduced us to the new Ghostbusters team of Callie (Coon), Egon Spengler’s daughter, and her kids Phoebe (Grace) & Trevor (Wolfhard), plus step-dad Gary (Rudd). This new team seems to have taken on the mantle well, and Nadeem (Nanjiani) introduces a new relic that obviously contains the “big bad ghost” that will appear at the end.

The film finds a way to bring back Ray (Aykroyd), Winston (Hudson), Janine (Potts) & Venkman (Murray), but only for minimum screentime, and not much of it together. Seems to be more of a focus on Phoebe being a teenager and not able to ghostbust and a near-pointless friendship with a ghost. There’s a few laughs throughout – Slimer’s back for a cameo, Patton Oswalt has a good exposition scene – but most laughs come from Kumail as the unwitting “fire-master”.

The main problem seems to be too much ensemble cast, so no-one gets chance to shine. After the first 15min, you almost forget Paul Rudd & Carrie Coon are even in it! And for even with the fan-service Murray, Aykroyd & Hudson provide, they’re barely used and have minimal impact in the final act. The big bad ghost is quite scary and formidable (would be even more-so to anyone under 10), and it all wraps up as expected.

Overall: Once again, not bad, but nothing special

Gav's Rating: 3 stars

Civil War

Official Australian release date: 11/4/24. Viewed: 15/4/24.
Director: Alex Garland
Actors: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaney, Stephen McKinley Henderson
Genre: War / Drama
Rating: MA

‘Civil War’ is a “what if” scenario of a in-the-near-future of where the USA could be headed if their divisive politics continue as they have over the past decade. It starts off with the president (Offerman) practising a speech and sets up what we assume is going to be a “the people vs Trump” allegory. But then we get introduced to war photographer Lee (Dunst) and semi-protégée Jessie (Spaney) at a rally that turns violent.

We then follow a road trip of Lee, Lee’s journalist partner Joel (Moura), their older colleague Sammy (McKinley Henderson) as they show Jessie the ropes of capturing the action while trying not to get hurt or effected by it, as they travel from New York to Washington DC past some sporadic battles. Intentionally, rather than full-on action and violence, there’s lots of introspective moments and quietness, interspersed with their view of a firefight. The four main actors are all good, with Dunst not actually having many lines. Good cameos from Nelson Lee and Jesse Plemons.

We don’t see any footage of the president again or the leaders of the “Western Front”, and no backstory is given for why/how this 21^st-century civil war was started. While I appreciate that’s a different angle taken on purpose, it does leave the whole film feeling a bit pointless, as we’re left to fill in lots of blanks and the plot leans on the generic “war is bad”. There’s some good moments, especially the last 20min of action, but you’re probably better off watching the ‘The Patriot’ do justice to the actual 19^th-centiry civil war.

Overall: Interesting concept, not fully realised

Gav's Rating: 3 stars