(Image via IFC)

Late Night with the Devil is the latest indie from brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes, a dizzyingly stylized found-footage flick about a fictitious '70s late-night host whose fortunes rose and fell precipitously — all before the final episode of his show made TV history ... and scared the hell out of everyone who saw it.

The film stars David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, a Carson also-ran and little engine who could, whose show Night Owls with Jack Delroy took off early amid reports of his involvement with a 1%er cult and wall-to-wall media coverage of his idyllic marriage to Madeleine “Minnie” Delroy.

It opens with an unnervingly long, detailed, expository  pseudo-doc about Delroy's life, the first hint at the filmmakers' Ryan Murphy-adjacent obsession with period accuracy and chic over substance.

However, because the events are entirely made up, and because the whole film is meant to be a genre dessert, like the best episode of Night Gallery you ever saw, the self-congratulatory set design and costuming are not a minus, but a mile-a-minute plus. Congrats are in order, including the self-kind.

(It should be noted the filmmakers are currently being raked over the coals for using AI on several images, chiefly cheesy “Happy Hall-owl-ween” cards shown during breaks and snafus of the fake talk show. While no fan of AI, I think it's a bit extreme to excommunicate a film for such a minor experimentation with it. I also think it's bizarre they bothered — they clearly could have had artists do a better job.)

Once the body of the Night Owls Halloween 1977 episode begins — the conceit being that a pristine copy of the original, now-infamous telecast is being screened after nearly 50 years — we are watching the show in real time, with inserts of purported BTS events to fill in the commercials.

On the night of the telecast, Delroy is truly at a crossroads — his wife has been dead of cancer for a year, his ratings are in such obvious freefall that his schmuck sidekick (Rhys Auteri) is openly joking about them on-air — so he is swinging for the fences, inviting hammy psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), razor-tongued skeptic Carmichael the Conjurer (Ian Bliss) and both the shrink author of a book about a girl emerging from a satanic cult (Laura Gordon) and the girl herself, Lilly (Ingrid Torelli).

Things immediately go so wrong they're right for ratings when Christou is overcome by a dark presence, gets sick, vomits black sludge and is hauled off to a hospital. We are not surprised to learn later he has died.

Giddy by the prospect of how such a spooky and inexplicable episode could have transpired, Delroy and his smarmy producer (Josh Quong Tart) are licking their chops — they're back, baby! — ahead of what's to come, a truly inexplicable, Exorcist-like performance by freaky-as-hell Lilly, under the care and guidance of the doctor who is making her B. Dalton-famous.

There is so much right with Late Night with the Devil that I hate to harp on what's wrong, but I do think what's wrong leaves a mark.

First, the film has a self-consciously creepy-campy tone (interactions with audience members come off as more John Waters than John Carpenter), so never really strikes fear in the heart. That does change a bit with a spectacular, imaginative, unforgettable ending, but the finale is also murky, even vague to a fault. I like twists, I like question marks, but when it feels the filmmakers are simply stirring the pot blindly to see what audiences will take away, it is disappointing.

Also, the film simply does not work as found footage. There are too many reminders, from the film stock used (especially in the BTS moments) to the wigs.

“Please love it!” (Image via IFC)

That said, Dastmalchian is absolutely perfect as Delroy. He is '70s-handsome, not '20s-handsome-in-'70s-drag — absolutely authentic to look at and listen to. He is remarkably sympathetic for a man we are all but told to suspect from the beginning has been dabbling where one oughtn't, and strikes the right chord of desperation and empathy.

While most of the others are also on-point, special credit must go to Torelli, who is nimbly walking a fine line between ridiculous and sublime as a cult-sprung youngster with zero social graces, one who grins and nods broadly as Christou crumbles, and who later — in a head-scratching mass-hypnosis scene — finds the appalling scene that is (apparently?) unfolding nothing more than silly. She can best be described as Jennifer Elise Cox playing Eve Plumb playing Linda Blair playing Regan, and she MacNeils it!

Plot holes — and ambitious TV personalities — be damned, the film is a unique vision that possesses the audience with the excitement of all who made it. They know they've created an indie film with which horror fans will connect and re-connect for many, many Hall-owl-weens to come.