Late Night With The Devil (2023) Dir: Cameron Cairnes & Colin Cairnes
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I've not been able to go to the cinema much at all lately, and one of the films I missed, despite being bery interested in seeing it, was this Cameron and Colin Cairnes directed horror. I wanted a weird and creepy film, and, to some extent, that's what I got.
It was certainly atmospheric, I'll give it that much. Although, its effectiveness waxed and waned quite dramatically. I think that the film's structure almost played against it in some ways, with the 'commercial breaks' completely killing its momentum.
The practical effects were a little goofy, but still quite good. The other special effects were not so good, but, considering the relatively miniscule budget, I was fine to let that go, for the most part. There were one or two shots that were particularly poor though, even with a small budget.
The story was intriguing, and kept me fairly engrossed, although the aforementioned momentum issues didn't help. I also think that the film lacked a little 'oomph'; scenes that should've had a big impact didn't quite hit as well as they should have. This was especially apparent with the film's climax, which was a little anticlimactic for me.
I should stress, I didn't dislike the film - it had plenty of positives. I liked how weird it was, I thought the slight goofiness of it all definitely played into its charm. There were elements of the story which I found pretty strong, but I wish they were explored more fully. I think there was a lot more there.
David Dastmalchian was, as I expected, marvellous. He had the mannerisms, the facial expressions and the delivery pretty much all on point. It was nice to see his charisma shine through, as well as his well-known weird streak. He outshone his co-stars by quite some way.
Laura Gordon marked the best of the rest with her supporting role. I felt like she was believable, and her performance exuded confidence. She had good chemistry with Dastmalchian, but, admittedly, less so with the other supporting cast members.
Ingrid Torelli had flashes of really good acting, but I felt that she overacted a lot more than she needed to, which made her character feel more comical than creepy. It was a shame, because the bits she did well, she did really well, but inconsistency let her down.
I was less enamoured by the rest of the cast, although I will still give mentions to the likes of Ian Bliss, Fayssal Bazzi, Rhys Auteri and Georgina Haig. Of these, Bliss stood out the most, though perhaps not for the right reasons. I found him rather irritating, in truth - though, that was kind of the point of his character, I guess.
Overall, I found myself a little disappointed by this one. It had a lot of potential, which is partly why it fell so short of the mark for me. I think it could've gone a lot further than it did. I wanted more, and I only really felt like I got that in the final ten minutes or so, and even then, it wasn't quite as much as I'd hoped. This may be a case of hopes being too high, but I think, even if I hadn't heard much about the film, I would have hoped for more as I was watching.
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