Late Night with the Devil
This got a nice bout of controversy for using AI-generated images in the ad-breaks for the fictional talk show. There were what, four or five still images over the running time? AI generated images are garbage, and humans should be used for things like this. It did not seem egregious enough for me to do a hard boycott of a low-budget horror movie, though I worry about the slippery slope.
Anyway, David Dastmalchian, one of the latest “that guy is in everything” type of guys, plays a talk show host who is perpetually second in the ratings to Johnny Carson, and generally on the edge of cancellation. Then, one Halloween episode, the guest list is a Uri Geller-type, a James Randi-type, and a possessed small girl. I guess a Regan MacNeil-type, though she is not in fact a real person. The entire thing is essentially buildup until we inevitably find out that the girl really is possessed and the shit hits the fan.
There’s a real big, obvious exposition drop at the beginning, dropping out reams of backstory; Dastmalchian was maybe part of a mysterious cult, he really liked his wife but she died of cancer, his show did OK, but then did badly and is currently on its last legs. That was a lot to throw in in not really the most elegant way, like it was just dictated up front by Princess Irulan. Nonetheless, the show itself handles the pacing really well, growing towards its inevitable conclusion. Enjoyable, even if fairly predictable.
The psychic does some obvious cold reading, but then has what sure does look like a genuine scary vision. The sceptic calls him a cheat and a liar. Everyone talks about the possessed girl who was rescued from a cult. The sceptic calls them cheats and liars. They do an Exorcist-style demonstration, which seems very real until the sceptic calls them all cheats and liars and does a wildly implausible mass hypnosis demonstration which has the host’s sidekick cutting his own stomach open and a bunch of worms falling out, which apparently everyone in the audience sees in an identical fashion.
But then, inevitably, the shit hits the fan and the demon comes out and causes absolute mayhem, snapping necks, cutting throats. The demon effect is like nothing I’ve really seen before, the girl’s head splitting in half with energy spilling out upwards, but done in something like an analogue VHS-style. It was cool.
Then we have kind of an alternative universe/flashback type of thing where - remember the opening info dump - Dastmalchian effectively sacrificed his wife to a demon to get a middling talk show. I guess it was the same demon? Bit of a coincidence really. Also I thought that skeleton guy in the crowd would have done something.