Late Night with the Devil Review

Description: A live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation’s living rooms.

Late Night With The Devil has a very strong cast and style. It’s like a throwback to 70s oldies, and while it falls short in some places, the overall product feels strongly atmospheric. Most of the characters have enough depth, well, maybe the critic was too pushy. The music and special effects are perfectly chosen for the time period and tone. Personally, the first part of the film felt stronger than the last. It had more tension and mystique. But that’s not a bad thing, it’s a fun nostalgic night out with Satan in the style of an old horror movie.

This will be a plus and a minus. The film’s horror elements work together very well, but also very unevenly. There are long gaps where nothing creepy or mystical seems to be happening. Elsewhere, this semi-documentary style is perfectly combined with minimal spice of horror. But perhaps the biggest hindrance, the film jumps from – um weird – to – demons and satan in a matter of moments! The end feels like just finishing, not closing what we’ve been building. Don’t expect too much horror, but Late Night with The Devil manages to create a good atmosphere and tense scenes…

You know, I have no problem with several different styles and leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether it’s a pseudo-documentary or a more standard story. But when you tell me that what I’m going to see is what the audience saw on camera, but then you have a lot of shots that couldn’t be shot from that angle or are just in the character’s head… then the whole structure falls apart. It’s not that the film can’t work, it’s just that it either needed to create more weird reasons for these camera angles or stick to the horror stronger. This tossing around takes a lot away from the emotion, and I won’t be mad if many viewers forgot in the middle that this was supposed to be filmed from a documentary perspective…