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
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