Dennis Harvey Film Critic Found-footage horror — that thing you never want to see again, until once every couple years someone finds a fresh angle — meets “The King of Comedy,” of all things, in “Late Night With the Devil.” The third feature from enterprising Aussie siblings Colin and Cameron Cairnes kicks up a notch their flair for bringing novel twists to familiar genre tropes, by positing occult mayhem during a live broadcast of a 1970s network talk show.
The resulting mix of vintage Me Decade showbiz cheese and “Exorcist”-y demonic doings is distinctive, not to mention deftly handled by the brothers as both writers and directors.
Well-received at its SXSW premiere, this clever high-concept gambit should raise its makers’ profile, likely inviting some Hollywood offers — which one suspects they’d be open to, given this is their first project set (though not produced) in the U.S.
rather than on home turf. An eight-minute black-and-white opening sequence establishes the Seventies as a “time of unrest and mistrust, fear and violence” — a view that might surprise those who experienced it as calm after those turbulent Sixties — balmed by mainstream televisual entertainment.
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