Ever since the COVID pandemic seems to have ended I haven't been doing much PD film festivals at home, because, well, the movie theaters opened again, and consequently I haven't been selecting any best movies of the year. Unless there's another pandemic coming, Abraxas forbid, I don't intend to do that anymore, but still, every now and then a movie might come along which I deem exceptionally good and one of my best movies of the year and that movie then deserves more attention. So, here's the review of one of those movies; Late Night With the Devil, which I first saw at the Fantasy Filmfest Nights in April, an almost hypnotic, dream-like experience; and to solidify my viewing experience and be sure not to have missed anything, I watched it a second time this past weekend at the wonderful Creepy Crypt, brought to you by Yorck Kinos.
Title is linked to imdb page for details, DON'T READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, PLEASE, THE TEXT BASICALLY CONSISTS OF SPOILERS ONLY!
Not another possession movie!!???
Well, I understand the frustration over this washed-out trope about the loss of control over the young female body to sinister and possibly evil entities. Speaking of which, I am still planning on writing that post about the state of women's rights in the world nowadays and the connected resurgence of body possession in horror fiction, just need to collect my thoughts on it.
Late Night with the Devil isn't only about possession though, it's actually barely about that, but rather an assemblage, a collage of various familiar tropes (possession, occultation and satanic panic) around a core staple; the Faustian bargain and the pasting of this agglomeration unto the found footage format, 70s style. I find this combination quite original and refreshing, despite it being nothing new.
It is the year 1977, turbulent times - war, oil crisis, satanic panic, and violence on TV. Late night show "Night Owls with Jack Delroy" (Delroy played by David Dastmalchian) is on top of its game and ranks amongst the best, despite the fluctuations in the popularity of its titular host, who disappears for a month after losing his wife Madeleine to cancer, but wants to make a spectacular comeback and to raise from his ashes. He returns to the screen and through that screen, into our living rooms. This notion of television in our living rooms is especially important in this picture; whatever is on TV, is experienced at home too, TV is a portal through which ideas can be distributed and the significance of that is underlined over and over. It is not for nothing that Jack panics toward the end of the movie, telling people to stop watching.
Jack makes his comeback with a dazzling Halloween special and curious guests: Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) famous medium between the living and the dead; the hilarious Carmichael the Conjurer Haig (Ian Bliss) whose sole purpose of being there is to debunk the supernatural, prove everything has a scientific explanation; parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and finally her protégé as well as guinea pig Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), who is also the sole survivor of the now destroyed Cult of Abraxas.
Until the spectacularly hallucinogenic finale, the audience will witness strange glitches, technical problems, breakdowns, and malfunctions progressively increasing during the broadcast, reaching their intoxicating, lethal peak during the interrogation of Lilly by Dr. June in order to conjure a certain evil presence attached to the young girl she calls Mr. Wriggles, as he wriggles his way inside and outside of her.
Let's start with that notion of "TV in your living room" and the more or less blurring lines between the space in front of the camera and the places in front of the screens. The movie itself is visually divided by the show broadcast and behind the scenes by filming the latter in black and white, while the show itself is in color. Because of various glitches and problems, the show is very frequently interrupted by messages, and the flick jumps to the black and white behind-the-camera scenes, in which crew members try to organize the show, talk about the things gone wrong, freak out etc. Although I enjoyed this division, they weren't exactly necessary, as they tend to overexplain and take away some subtleness from which the movie could have profited.
There are quite a few instances where the line between TV and reality is being blurred, and some are seriously unsettling. Take, for instance, Lilly being introduced to the show and she insistently and constantly looking into the camera - didn't you feel watched? I certainly had the feeling she's looking at me and it lowkey freaked me out, I only relaxed when Jack told her she can look at him. It's quite unusual too, I'm not a filmmaker at all, but isn't it even a no-go in filmmaking to never look into the camera? The only scene I can remember in which the actor looks into the camera is from another horror movie, An American Werewolf in London, in the transformation scene where main character David, while screaming in agony, reaches out to the camera, as if to ask for help. I felt unsettled then too.
Another such boundary-crossing takes place when Carmichael claims that everything irregular happening in the show is probably a result of some hypnosis trick and he attempts to show how easily it is done by hypnotizing the show's side-kick Gus, but claiming that people in the audience and viewers sitting in front of their TVs will be affected insofar as they can follow his instructions. Thing is - the first time I watched the movie, although safely sitting in my cinema seat, I really felt that I watched the rest of the movie in a trance. It all was over before I could even grasp what's happening, and I felt I watched 20 minutes only when it was a full feature movie. I have no idea, but maybe, just maybe - he hypnotized me too? Is that possible? Watching it the second time, I briefly went to the toilet during the trance scenes and thus could concentrate on the ending, I just didn't want to take any chances, silly me.
Talking about Carmichael (what a silly name too), I have to add my sympathies at this point. From my personal vantage point, it is absolutely understandable to try to explain things scientifically, sometimes to debunk mystery, sometimes to just dissipate the fear of the unexplainable. I was a little bummed he is the first to go to his knees and pray to a powerful god.
I have already mentioned above that this, in its core is the story of a Faustian bargain. But somehow it's not even that - this is the story of a man waking up to the fact that he has closed a deal with the Devil. Dreamer, awake.
The Devil, Satan, is a very compelling villain in especially horror fiction anyway, but the here mentioned "Devil" in the Catholic sense, is Abraxas, thus an old Egyptian/Assyrian Deity, a God, and that is really intriguing and raises a few questions too. Even though declared a demon by the Church, Abraxas is believed by some philosophers and Gnostics to be a God, who even is believed to have sent a ghost, Jesus, to Earth. Now think about that, think you are meeting your God, but it's such a hideous and foul creature that you confuse him to be a Devil... Imagine the entity inside Lilly is actually God. What an exquisite, Lovecraftian twist!
Some of the imagery in this movie aligns with the beliefs of a Gnostic Sect, the Basilideans, that Abraxas has a chimera-like appearance with the head of a bird (an owl here), the use of stones by Dr. June makes sense while there is a whole set of Abraxas-stones, and finally even the connection made between the words "Abracadabra" versus "Abraxas" seems to be authentic. P.S. I'm not a Gnostic, I just did some very cursory research because I find the wide range of religious villains very interesting.
Finally, I have been seeing in reviews that this movie is being review bombed and down-voted because they apparently used AI for the making of the logo of the show... Before going over to my opinion on that I want to highlight my astonishment of how people can even distinguish AI art from genuine art. I have been diagnosed with a face recognition weakness (aka face blindness) a couple of years ago, it's not as tragic as it sounds, I just need at least ten encounters with someone before I can start to recognize them outside of context and even then it's difficult. I hope Otherland Jakob doesn't read this, but once I met him on the street and he was on his bike and wearing a helmet, was not wearing his usual glasses and because he was out of breath, I didn't recognize his voice either; his hairline, glasses and voice are all markers for me. So we stood on the street and talked for like 10 minutes before he mentioned his wife Nicola and I finally knew who he is. Sorry Jakob! But until a couple of years ago I always thought I'm insanely distracted and dreamy, while the problem is that wherever I go and enter a room, it's always strangers for me. So I recently started wondering how this condition has affected my watching movies, and seeing things on the screen. In that context I was wondering if it's this condition which prevents me from recognizing AI art.
That all was an aside, here comes my rant:
This is an indie movie, for Abraxas' sake! It's not like anyone lost their job because of AI, they probably wouldn't have been able to afford someone anyway, I mean their budget is fairly low, and did you even know one of the one hundred tiny film studios cited in the beginning of the movie? Give them a break, please. Indie horror movies are awesome and important, and though I understand the need to call out AI art, they are easy targets for the choices they make. Let's save the protest for the big guys, guys.
Final verdict: I had a ball watching this movie. Twice. And as soon as it is shown in cinemas, I will go again, and maybe add stuff to my review, who knows. I'm seeing two release dates, May 30 and June 6, in any case it will be on soon, until then, be careful what you wish for, it may come true.
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