Late Night With The Devil (2024)

An additional entry, because it takes place on Halloween night, and was certainly a fun watch. At no point I would argue this film is actually scary, but there are some genuinely great moments for genre fans. It is a pitch-perfect recreation of a 70’s talk show, and viewers will recognize the guests as espys for various famous figures of that era, focusing on the craze for all things psychic and supernatural. Even with the 70’s gloss, one can tell this has some superb production values and is an acting showcase for David Dastmalchian, who has absolutely proven his prowess considering how much sympathy and pathos he could interject for a character as absurd as the Polka Dot Man… In this he delivers a riveting performance, alternating between sympathetic and suspicious, but fully believable especially as the last act’s endgame carries some extreme emotional weight. A parallel to this film might be ‘Starry Eyes’, the thematic bridge being at what length, and what one might sacrifice to achieve stardom. While most of the found footage variants and tropes have been exhausted, this manages to be creative and clever with its variation on the subgenre. The last act might prove divisive, as it dives into surrealism and abandons the found-footage premise in favor of a vision of personal torment, but; if following, all the threads connect and everything makes sense. This is a story of ambition and aspiration, and there is a genie in the bottle element of what it might actually mean to see one’s dreams actualized.

B+