Late Night with the Devil is a New Kind of Horror

A throwback that's scarring its way to the top of the box office!

Late Night with the Devil is a newfound footage horror film that is dominating the market. The film follows a late night TV show host desperately trying to keep his ratings high. In a stroke of genius, he decides to bring on a young girl who is supposedly possessed by the Devil. Things then go about as well as one might expect.

Late Night with the Devil is an expose of the entertainment industry as a whole. Primarily, how it is able to convince people to trade their dignity and self worth for a shot at fame and fortune. While this may seem a little tongue in cheek coming from a blockbuster film, the message has had a profound impact on audiences who are turning out in droves to see this horror spectacle.

You can imagine Satan looking at his TV in the 70s and calling his agent - Matt Zoller Seitz

This isn’t to say the release of this film has been all thunderclouds and sacrifices. Late Night with the Devil may be doing well in theaters, but a sizable number of people are boycotting the film for its use of generative AI images.

Throughout the film, there are three still images that use generative AI. These are fleeting shots of cue cards that state simple phrases like “We’ll be right back.” Small as these images may seem, the use of AI has struck a nerve in the design community as well as horror fans. The film's star, David Dastmalchian, sat down with Variety recently to discuss the issue. Here is what he had to say.

"The only thing that makes me sad is we had such an awesome graphics design team, and all these artists who were working on making this film so perfect, so it makes me sad that this is a story that's getting attention, but I get it,"

But regardless of whatever hurdles the film may be facing at the moment, it seems clear that Late Night with the Devil is quickly becoming a pop culture phenomenon. The opening weekend for the film blew past the previous record profits for IFC films and even earned $666,666.00 on Sunday. No amount of advertising is going to hurdle your film into greatness like that coincidence.

It should also be noted that Late Night with the Devil is only receiving a limited theatrical release. Beginning April 18^th, the film will be available to stream on Shudder. For a film with a tiny release window and an equally small budget, Late Night with the Devil is pulling in scary amounts of revenue. The film has already amassed $2.8 million in ticket sales.

Horror has been steadily rising in popularity in the past decade, and films like Late Night with the Devil exemplify the need for the genre. Horror allows us to tackle major societal issues behind the cover of a mask. Late Night with the Devil takes the larger issue of the entertainment industry and breaks it down into a digestible and frightening tale about possession.

David Dastmalchian is no stranger to the horror genre. He has performed in productions such as Bird Box, Twin Peaks, The Belko Experiment, and 12 Monkeys. His new production company, Good Fiend Films, is responsible for bringing this new tale of terror to the market. The world is dying to find out what macabre tale David is going to bring us next.