{Movie Review} What Did You Have to Sacrifice to Get Here Tonight?: Late Night with the Devil (2024)

“Staging, where’s my sacrificial dagger?”

It is impossible to talk about Cannibal Holocaust (1980) without discussing the real-life violence to animals perpetrated by the filmmakers as part of the production. Even for a movie that courted controversy from the moment of its release, that was notoriously banned and censored and slapped with a lawsuit which obliged the director to prove that he hadn’t actually made a snuff film, it is the animal cruelty that hangs like a pall over the production decades later.

Similarly, it is impossible to talk about Late Night with the Devil without discussing the filmmakers’ decision to “experiment” with including so-called “AI art” in the end product. The move has already excited enough controversy to cause the filmmakers to release a statement to Variety, and a casual glance at Letterboxd shows it dominating virtually every review.

And while the producers of the film might hope that this is the “good” kind of controversy – like forcing Ruggero Deodato to prove that he hadn’t actually killed some of his actors – it’s actually the kind that is going to hang like a pall over the film for years to come, and be a justified dealbreaker for many.

It isn’t just that the machine-generated interstitials in the film look terrible (they do) and drag the viewer out of the immersion (also the case), but that, like the real-life animal violence of Cannibal Holocaust, using “AI” images has real-world consequences that will – and should – elicit a social cost, guaranteeing that no one can ever interact with Late Night with the Devil without first reckoning with that decision.

Perhaps it’s fitting that, in making a movie about deals with the devil and the costs that they incur, the filmmakers entered into their own Faustian pact with “AI.” Unfortunately, any such thematic resonance is still to their detriment, and the detriment of their film.

This is typically where I would say something like, “Leaving that aside, how was the movie?” But those machine-generated images are, in many ways, emblematic of all that holds Late Night with the Devil back from being the movie it almost is.

Styled as the remnants of a live broadcast which took place on Halloween night in 1977, Late Night with the Devil courts comparisons to a number of other, better movies right out of the gate, and mostly doesn’t look too bad when stacked up against them. There’s a lot to like in the film’s conjuration of the disastrous final episode of a talk show that never existed, and any praise of the picture pretty much has to start with Kansas City’s very own “local boy done good,” David Dastmalchian, who turns in an impressive performance that anchors the proceedings beautifully.

But it doesn’t end there. In fact, the film opens with what was maybe its strongest moment, for me, a voiceover montage narrated by Michael Ironside which sets up the fictional reality of the show. It’s reminiscent of the brilliant Rod Serling narration at the beginning of Phantom of the Paradise, and does a similarly good job of establishing the reality of the movie’s fiction.

Unfortunately, that same sense of verisimilitude doesn’t always extend to the film’s conceit. Though it is presented as the recovered master footage of a live broadcast, it isn’t at all credible as one, and doesn’t really try very hard to be. The movie contains subjective shots and behind-the-scenes segments (filmed in black-and-white) that no one would have been shooting.

Hamstringing your credibility as a found document isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker but, like the “AI” images, it underscores a problem that exists throughout the piece – a lack of anything that brings it all together. Late Night with the Devil is a lot of strong elements that never really coalesce into a strong movie, always just missing the mark. (It is perhaps overly pedantic to criticize the film’s decision to make Abraxas the demon worshipped by its evil cult when Stolas was right there, but it feels like just another example of things that are present but never quite gel.)

The decision to release a movie set on Halloween night in the middle of March might also indicate a degree of uncertainty as to the picture’s identity. If this had been released direct to Shudder in the last weeks of October, it would be a legitimate sensation – and maybe a deserved one. No matter when you release it, however, you’re bound to incur an inevitable comparison to previous films that have attempted the premise of a live Halloween broadcast, notably Ghostwatch and the WNUF Halloween Special, both of which pull the concept together more successfully.

Still, there is certainly less rarified company to keep, and it is to its credit that Late Night with the Devil can probably sit comfortably enough beside them, as long as you can get past the “AI” bullshit – assuming you would ever even want to.