Writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes have made some low-profile horror flicks in the past, none of which I’ve seen, but I saw their latest, a mockumentary found-footage-adjacent indie darling called Late Night With the Devil, was coming to theaters, and I made an effort to not watch a trailer and not learn very much about it before going in. Because in my experience, movies like this are better when you go into them as cold as possible. However, I would learn one critical piece of information that would keep me from enjoying this film as much as I otherwise could have.

The year is 1977, and Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) has a late night talk show where he’s always coming in right behind Johnny Carson in the ratings. On Halloween night, he concocts a sweeps week gimmick where he would invite onto the show parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her young client Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) who seems to be possessed by an evil spirit. On air, Delroy plans to essentially perform a séance and exorcise this demon from Lilly. Things don’t go as planned.

I’m so conflicted with this one. Late Night With the Devil is a lean, mean, horrific and efficient piece of filmmaking. It’s incredibly effective and inventive and it’s got that edge-of-your-seat suspense thing happening, and you truly don’t know where this thing is going to take you at any given moment. It also gives the great David Dastmalchian a leading role, and that’s something we don’t get to see every day. He more than rises up to the challenge, and this is probably the definitive work of his career so far. 

The costumes and production design are spot-on and visually exciting the entire time. And although I could pick a few holes in the execution of it all, as a piece of cinema that’s showing you something you haven’t quite seen before – this works big time, and in spades. The abbreviated runtime works in its favor, and this film never overstays its welcome. It was a rare theatrical experience that had the audience dead silent for the entire time, and got everyone to put their phones away, and that in and of itself is a beautiful thing. You really do sit there for so long with your hands covering your face, shocked by where this thing goes. It’s unpredictable, it’s sharp, creative and one of the better horror films I’ve seen in a while. I really enjoyed this movie, but I can’t quite recommend it. Not in its current form.

And that’s because directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes used AI for the interstitial segments (the ‘we’ll be right back!’ title cards, for instance). Had I not been told this point into this movie, I don’t know if I would have noticed it. But when asked in an interview about it, the directing duo basically doubled down, and said that AI was used before the strikes happened, and ‘before they knew it was a bad idea.’ This seems particularly disingenuous, despite the film being made for an abbreviated budget. It still feels like that should be no excuse to use AI. It brings to mind all of the ‘feature presentation’ interstitials in movies like Grindhouse. Surely if the kind of imagery they wanted to use for this film was not already in existence, they could have hired some graphic designers who no doubt would have done the job for cheap, or for free, to do the work instead.

I can’t completely condemn Late Night With the Devil, but I feel hesitant to give this film the glowing recommendation I want to give it. I will say accepting AI even in an instance like this is absolutely not okay and sets a bad precedent. Because if we do allow AI to be used in microbudget indie films, where do we draw that line? And knowing this information when you go in kind of stinks up this entire movie. I love this movie and also to hell with this movie. See it when they inevitably do a reissue with fixed up images, because something tells me that day is coming.