ONCE UPON A TIME WITH SATAN
A live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation’s living rooms. Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy hosts a syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack’s beloved wife. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other- unaware he is about to unleash evil into the living rooms of America.
Directed by: Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes
Written by: Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes
Starring:
David Dastmalchian
Laura Gordon
Ian Bliss
Fayssal Bazzi
Ingrid Torelli
Rhys Auteri
Georgina Haig
Josh Quong Tart
We’re at a weird flux in entertainment, both in how we consume it and how it’s manufactured. The wake of a writer’s and actor’s strike focused not only on residuals, but on the use of AI in film, is still impacting film and television production. Movies are now advertised as being only in cinemas, a result of the Covid pandemic. But now the turn around time between a theatrical release and a streaming window is four weeks or less. Which allows many people to just wait until they can enjoy it in the sanctity of their own homes. Streaming services are actually getting producer credits on some films they’ve earmarked for their platform. And Shudder is at the top of the list.
Shudder’s track record with exposing us to quality horror can’t be denied, in particular foreign films like Argentina’s WHEN EVIL LURKS, or the polarizing indie affair SKINAMARINK. Now, last year I started hearing rumblings of a new “found footage” horror film focused on the recently restored taping of a syndicated seventies talk show, wherein a live demonic possession was allegedly documented. It was called LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, and the first trailer I saw for it hooked me immediately. And seeing Shudder’s name in the credits made me giddy.
I finally got the opportunity to see the anticipated film last week and contributed to its sixth place run at the weekend box office, $43 million behind the big budget love letter to Ivan Reitman in GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE. Still, with only $2.8 million it became IFC’s highest grossing theatrical debut and more than made back its less than $2 million budget. LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL was everything I’d hoped it would be, and more, I’m happy to say. On the surface, it’s mostly an expose on how to write horror, both good… and bad (we’ll touch on the bad stuff later!). The good? There is plenty of it. The acting, especially star David Dastmalchian, shines. Each guest and behind the scenes crew are believable in their archetypal roles, from slimy producer to the co-host announcer. It has frequent call backs to set ups in the dialogue or visuals. It’s paced well, like a good television show. Fundamentally, it’s the ninety-minute TV version of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.
How so, you ask? That movie was a month long and a little pretentious. I can’t argue either of those statements. But, more than anyone, Quentin Tarantino has long had his fingers on the pulse of Hollywood. His love letter to the history of the entertainment capital basking under the sunlight of California, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, was one of the most polarizing of his career, seamlessly blending history and fiction into a brilliant film that encapsulates everything there was to know about filmmaking during the era of the Seventies. It’s his love letter to this portion of pop culture. And Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes have done the same thing for seventies TV with LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL. It’s not their love letter to the seventies, it’s for all of Gen-X.
You see, I’m a child of this era, the Seventies. Born in 1967, my first recollections are of 1970s television and I am a product of that era’s popular culture. HR Puffinstuff. Saturday morning cartoons with School House Rock. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The Night Stalker. The Six Million Dollar Man. Cryptids. It was the time of variety shows like Donnie & Marie, or Glen Camplbell, or Sonny & Cher. Oh, and the reign of talk shows from daytime, like Phil Donahue and Mike Douglas; to the night, when the likes of Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, or the Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson battled for late night supremacy. I also vividly remember the Satanic Panic, which started around THE EXORCIST and AMITYVILLE HORROR. Or how about the frequent psychics and paranormal investigators who showed up on many of the talk shows, variety shows, and game shows of this era; from Uri Gellar’s spoon bending to Ed & Lorraine Warren’s bullshit.
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL seamlessly weaves all of these aspects together in its world building. The late night talk show wars, the conspiracies of the Bohemian Grove, Anton LeVay and the Satanic Panic. They’re all here. Perhaps my most endearing memory from that era was one of the inspirations for this film? I mean could THE PAUL LYNDE HOLIDAY SPECIAL be something that spoke to the Cairnes Brothers? Afterall, it featured not one, but two Halloween witches (H&R Puffentstuff’s Witchy Poo and the Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West!), a gay leading man pretending to be straight, and.. well… KISS.
The film works… until it doesn’t, and its failures are causing some people to scratch their heads, but they can’t figure out why. I try to keep these spoiler free, but I can’t do so without revealing some of the plot. So, yeah, we’ve all heard there’s AI usage in this film. The problem we have with this movie isn’t its use of Generative AI (#TalkAboutThatLater). Many of my peers who are good writers are being vocal about something leaving them unsettled with the film’s climax. I’m here to explain what their subconscious is screaming about. It’s bad writing, and a trap new writers often fall into.
Our problem is… LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL is unfaithful. It cheats with its writing. You see, typically a movie cheats when it doesn’t foreshadow the twist in the opening. Cheating of this sort is glaring, and people will notice it. As a result they won’t be happy with the film. Now, I’m happy to say LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL does foreshadow its ending, and does it well. We’re experiencing a different type of narrative infidelity here. See, we’re supposed to be watching an unadulterated television taping with a documentary style opening, followed by the master tapes of the show itself.
And LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL is not always faithful to that framing.
Just like the sexual revolution of the seventies, this movie cheats like a swinger on a business trip. So why and how does it cheat? It mixes reality and fantasy at two points in the film, breaking the established narrative framing. In book terms, it jumps heads, and in two important scenes – the hypnosis scene and the climax. And though we see the actual footage of the early hypnotism scene play out (were we all “hypnotized?” and sharing a group hallucination – this can work in a movie but it will only work once!), we only see the outcome of the climax after a trip into host Jack’s head and how his mind interprets the events… only to show the end results of what the audience witnessed. And though we were ready for this ending, because the film does a wonderful job of setting it up in the documentary portion, in particular the ties between the Grove, the Cult of Abraxas, Lilly, and Jack; I think the climax might’ve worked better if we saw BOTH what was in his head and what the viewing audience may have witnessed. But I’m really nitpicking about this. The climax is a visual feast with some jaw dropping, head splitting, neck twisting moments.
#LetsTalkAboutThatNow… Within this film are a trio of images that are clearly AI. Why the Cairnes brothers would use this when they have all this wonderful imagery throughout the movie simply blows my mind. Yeah, I can understand experimenting with AI, same as you might want to experiment with your sexuality, but some things you should keep behind closed doors. And experimentation of this nature is one of those things you don’t want to do in public cos all it’s going to do is get people whispering about it. There was plenty of backlash for Disney+ using Generative AI to create the opening credits for SECRET INVASION, so they can’t say a precedent wasn’t set.
None of the placards even match the aesthetic established by the film. It was cheaply done (for free!) and done on the cheap and it did its best to take me out of the narrative… but I didn’t allow it to ruin the film for me. I think the greater issue at hand is my eyes are trained to see AI art, to catch those little uncanny valley nuances every piece of AI art has. The average American is not, and it’s not just consumers of entertainment, as exemplified by the number of professionals in the writing communities who can’t tell the difference. I hate to say it, but Generative AI art and writing are here to stay, no matter how much I and many of my peers adamantly fight against its use. I’ve since learned this addition was a post production, post SXSW screening edit, done by the directors, not the handy work of an overzealous editor as I had hoped. It was a bullshit move by the creators.
IS THIS GENERATIVE AI ART?
Should this ruin your enjoyment of the movie? I hope not. As I said before, though I noticed them and saw them for what they were, it didn’t soil the film for me. Hell, even the cheating didn’t ruin this movie for me. The performances are top notch and the film is made so well otherwise, I can forgive both, and so can you. Don’t wait for Shudder on this one, even though it hits the streamer on April 19th. If we want more movies like this, the only way we’re going to get them in theaters is if people go. Hell, it may have come in sixth place, but on Sunday it made a devilish $666,666.00… need I say more?
