IR-Rated Supernatural Thriller Delightfully Dark, Supernatural, Nocturnal Temptation
Written by Robert Scucci | Published
Ever since Conan O’Brien was let out of his NBC contract in 2010, I’ve stayed away from the late-night show because it’s always the same format. There are monologues about the president, celebrities and musical guests, and repetitive conversations that get even funnier when you see the stars do their own news rounds, repeating the same jokes and stories verbatim from show to show. Conan was the standout because he brought surreal, over-the-top beats to the table that made the format feel dated, something that should have been inspired rather than completely removed from late-night television.
However, if the entire night show ended it was the same Barn Owls and Jack Delroyplanned for mid-2023 Night with the DevilI would definitely sing more often. Night with the Devil it has a lot going for it, and I’m honestly pissed I just watched it for the first time this week. Its effectiveness is threefold: a late-night show, an accessible horror film, and an existential story. In all three ways, the film thrives on generating unease, and it’s fun to watch everything unfold as the story is told in multiple locations.
Fun With Format
Night with the Devil centers on Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), the manager of Barn Owlsa nightly program that directly competes with it The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Returning to negative proportions after a long absence to deal with the death of his wife Madeleine (Georgina Haig), Jack knows he needs a big win during Sweepstakes Week if his comeback is to mean anything. His solution is a Halloween-themed episode focused on the occult, packing the desk with guests who promise a lively, media-friendly conversation. Spoiler alert: nothing about this ends up being media friendly.
Jack’s first visitor is Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a psychic who claims to be able to communicate with the dead. At first, his act sounds like a cold John Edwards-style reading trick, but everything changes when he reveals a warning about Jack’s late wife that hasn’t been made public. After a while, Christou becomes very ill and is rushed to the set, never to be seen again.
The next episode introduces Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), a master magician and a stranger who insists that there must be a logical explanation for what just happened. Carmichael ups the ante by offering a huge cash reward to anyone who can definitively prove the existence of the supernatural, positioning himself as the voice of reason in a studio that’s starting to feel a bit shaky.
This leads directly to the real meat and potatoes of Night with the Devil: June Ross-Mitchell, a respected parapsychologist and author, and her latest subject, Lilly (Ingrid Torelli). Jack pushes June to show, both to the studio audience and viewers at home, that demonic possession is real. Lilly says she is possessed by a demon she calls Mr. Wriggles, and from this point forward, no pulling the ripcord. His chair moves, his voice and body shift in awkward ways, and everyone just pops, and rightly so.
While Carmichael thinks the whole thing is an elaborate plan, Jack and his producers are busy in the background because they don’t know what’s going on. The show is in full swing, the crew is panicking, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that something terrible is happening. To make matters worse, Jack begins to suspect that he may be more connected to the demonic presence than he realizes.
Unlike most found-footage films that rely on shaky cameras and questionable editing to break immersion, Night with the Devil it succeeds because of its setting. A television studio is an ideal place for this method. Technically it’s video footage in the sense that we’re watching raw A and B reels, but nothing about it feels artificial.
The film fully commits to the idea that we’re watching a late-night broadcast collapse in real time. Color images represent what actually aired, while black-and-white sequences capture what happened during commercial breaks as the team desperately tried to regain control after each increasingly bizarre incident. That contrast supports the premise and keeps everything ringing true.
Rumors from the audience sealed the deal. Even better is watching Jack and his guests fidgeting as the producer counts down until they’re live again, only for everyone to revert to polished, well-done mode when the cameras roll out. It doesn’t feel forced. It sounds like a late-night reality show that went disastrously off the rails, was quietly pulled from syndication, only to be rediscovered years later.
If you’ve felt like late night shows haven’t been the same since Coco took her 2010 hit, Night with the Devil is exactly the kind of breath of fresh air you’ve been waiting for, and it’s streaming on Hulu as of this writing.
