SUPERMAN (2025)

By Joe O’Shansky

Just a year after the cannonball of Star Wars we got Richard Donner’s first Superman film. Superheroes, up ’til then, between The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Spiderman and Supes, among others, were always a staple of television. Donner’s Superman, and particularly its star, Christopher Reeve, were what defined a superhero movie in 1978.

The thing is, Superman is essentially a Boy Scout from another planet. He’s an immigrant in America who only wants to defend his adopted world from peril. Always doing the right thing. Which, on the whole, makes him a little boring. He doesn’t have much of the darkness and internal strife, despite the loss of his homeworld, that makes a DC character like Batman so compelling.

I guess Snyder and Goyer did the grimdark version with Man of Steel, and they really didn’t understand the assignment (“Hey, maybe he kills Zod? That would be hardcore.”) But at the end of the day, whatever iteration of these archetypes exist—from Superman, to Lex Luthor, to Lois Lane, to Jimmy Olsen and Perry White, over the course of decades—they’ve all been filtered through different creators, for better and worse.

James Gunn’s Superman gets all of them right, realigning who those characters are supposed to be, what a superhero flick is supposed to be, while setting a bar for what a comic book film looks like. He understood the assignment.

For once, it’s not a fucking origin story, and all that is largely handled with a few deft lines of text that drop you right into the here and now. Supes (David Corenswet) has just crash landed in the Arctic after getting his ass handed to him by a robotic foe controlled by Lex Luthor (Nicholas Holt). Meanwhile, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is dating Clark Kent (still Corenswet) though she knows his secret identity. When questions about Superman’s true intentions for humanity surface, the people to which he considers himself as one, and beholden to protect, turn against him.

I’ll leave the synopsis there, because you just need to go see it. In a thee-ater. Read that in British.

I don’t know when Gunn started writing this script, but it seems to land at the right time. Societal rifts and the idea that basic human empathy being lost in a bug zapper of media noise, that a propagandist and narcissist with a chip on his shoulder could fool people into not believing the evidence of their eyes and ears. Sound familiar? But really the reason this is kinda the best Superman ever made has less to do with Gunn’s prescience, and more with the execution of his balls-to-the-wall script, a faithful story with fantastic actors who leave everything on the field—as well as being a visual feast of itself. Definitely a plus, but what is still blowing my mind is that I’ve rarely seen a summer tentpole this economically bad ass since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The not so subtle subtexts under it all; runaway tech, social media (and those megamoguls who want to shape reality), othering immigrants vs. the idea that modern society should be rooted in empathy, an objective truth and justice, like what the American Way (at least in the romanticized, hagiographic sense) used to be, are all well-executed under Gunn’s deft writing and propulsive direction.

The way the characters and the performances are all load-bearing elements of the story seems almost effortless (it’s not) and it’s something you don’t see so much in a CGI-laden actiongasm. Yet here they are. Corenswet brings everything to the role, and I’d be hard pressed to come up with a reason why every version of these iconic characters aren’t the best portrayals in any Superman flick that I’ve ever seen. They’re dynamic and funny as hell.

Superman was always a little boring to me. This is what happens when he isn’t.

9/10

28 Years Later

By Joe O’Shansky

When 28 Days Later came out in 2002 its only antecedent was Paul W.S Anderson’s first Resident Evil flick. One was a misadapted video game, while the other did something very new, even in the well-worn realm of zombie movies, especially since it basically mixtapes the first three of Romero’s Dead trilogy into one movie.

For one thing, the zombies of 28 Days Later (“Don’t say the zed word.”) really aren’t zombies. They never actually died. Nerds dick fight about this point a lot, but I’m on board with the idea of a hypervirulent version of rabies turning everybody into a blood-vomiting Usain Bolt who must feast early and often.

But, yeah, they ain’t zombies.

What director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland made then felt fresh, if only for the aesthetic, going out of its way to shoot the whole bloody affair on consumer-grade, tape-based Digital Video cameras and using authentic locations in London that looked miraculously abandoned. Experiential and experimental lo-fi arthouse horror in the post-apocalyptic lens of the Dogme ‘95 movement. It’s great. But it did conform to a formula. Pick nits all you like (I just did) about whether or not every zombie flick in the last 50 years owes a debt to George Romero (they all do), but the fealty to the template of 28 Days, or Weeks Later, is something 28 Years Later largely avoids.

Beginning roughly around the events of 28 Weeks Later, we quickly flash forward to the now, 28 years later (Jesus), where the whole of Britain has been quarantined, after the rest of the world contained the virus decades before. If you wind up on mainland England, for whatever reason, you can never leave.

Meanwhile, an agrarian community resides just beyond the quarantine zone on an adjacent island which, when the tide recedes, reveals a traversable causeway to the mainland. Here is where we meet Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), husband to Isla (Jodie Comer) and father to his young man Spike (Alfie Williams). Isla is clearly ill, suffering nosebleeds and moments of mania. The post-apocalypse being what it is they basically reside in Middle Ages England, equipped with the appropriate fortifications and weapons you’d expect (bows and arrows and fire) all of which demands that Jamie become a scavenger, or more appropriately a hunter/gatherer, who often braves the trip to the mainland to get supplies and valuables to be traded or shared while killing anything in his way.

But, on this occasion, Jamie decides that his son is capable of joining him on an outing, like a rite of passage. What follows is a coming-of-age-story about how Spike sees the new world, and especially the relationship between his parents, when he begins to grasp the stakes of his mother’s illness and his father’s recklessness and decides to do something about it.

What the reunited duo of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have crafted here is a much more human post-apocalypse, about the bubble of control in a simple society. I mean, think about how all of civilization is the illusion of control, even now in a vast, complex and ever shifting and increasingly fucked up world. Like how when the lights go out it’ll be fight and flight. The apocalypse of the Rage Virus in these films (TDS?) is what it took to unite people in the aftermath, which is a huge thread in 28 Years Later, that the rest of the civilized world had become largely normal by then (a notion implied in the film, with all the military patrols and tech from the rest of Europe regularly keeping eyes on England).

Meanwhile, the island neighbors, possessed of the basics, working with very little information and who are seemingly happy to do so, rarely chose to leave their bubble. When Jamie and Spike do just that, the consequences of that choice are where Boyle and Garland mine fear.

The characters and the world are just as fleshed out as they needed to be and no more, with dialed in performances from Johnson, Comer, and Williams, and a human story that might defy the expectations of fans who want more of that over-the-top Rage action. Make no mistake, that’s still here, with a couple of really nice setpieces which amp up the tension. That said, a couple of things made me furrow my brow in confusion (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here) from an incident that should have gotten everyone killed, or even just some of the disjointed editing that felt like something was contextually left out. Fairly minor quibbles now, but maybe stuff that might bug me more with repeated viewings, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. It’s a film that takes you on a ride if you let it.

Boyle, in a hat tip to the consumer-grade cameras he shot 28 Days Later with, opted for an update with the iPhone 16 (outfitted with a dope outer lens array). The images are miles beyond the digital Hi8mm from back then, with often incredibly cinematic, wide-angle vistas rendered with the clarity of a much more expensive camera. Dark, naturally lit scenes suffer some artifacting, which reveals the limitations, intentional though they are. Ultimately, the film looks great, and apparently part of the reasoning for going with phone cams was the light footprint. According to Boyle, they were conscious of not trampling around in the pristine, idyllic and beautiful locations (which are apparently protected) with a huge crew and a ton of equipment.

As with the final product, that care shows. 28 Years Later is a unique and more than worthy entry to the franchise, and a nice springboard for two more planned films with even bigger…scope.

And dongs.

I’m sorry.

Predator: Killer of Killers

By Joe O’Shansky

Fans of the Predator films found something to love again when director Dan Trachtenberg (of 2016’s underrated 10 Cloverfield Lane) made his indigenous prequel to the decade-spanning series, Prey, in 2022, which is objectively the best entry since the first film in ‘87. To say that it was well-received by fans would be an understatement, too. The only major complaint seemed to be that one couldn’t see that cinematic, beautifully shot, scenic as all hell, utterly badass reinvigoration of the franchise in a theater.

I guess Hulu got the memo, because now Trachtenberg’s November-slated sequel, Predator: Badlands, is getting an IMAX release. But in the meantime, there’s the animated, time-hopping, Predator: Killer of Killers to tide one over, premiering on Hulu this June 6th.

Killer of Killers gives you the Heavy Metal/Love Death+Robots sugar rush version the Predator, infused by lovely, kinetic animation in varied, eye-pleasing styles, across a series of ultraviolent vignettes ranging from the days of Vikings, to the samurai, to the Second World War where, in essence, the Predators are doing how the Predators do. Come on down to a planet and kill the shit out of its strongest warriors, or to be killed. For fun and career stats. Obviously.

And that is most definitely what you get here. It’s all about the aesthetics and visceral nature of the animation within a series of interlocking stories, that on the whole aren’t particularly deep, and are only connected by the antagonist (as well as perhaps the notions of bravery among the protagonists as they come to grips with what they’re up against). But they are all extremely well-executed. Co-directed by Trachtenberg with Micho Robert Rutare (who penned the scripts), the imagery and cut to the bone stories are like a B-12 shot of straight dope for any fan of this series. Is it simplistic? Sure, but doing simple things well is an art form all its own.

At the end of the day, take Predator: Killer of Killers for what it is, because it’s not trying to be anything other than what it is, a bloody aperitif, a salivating appetizer before the main course of Badlands.

Friendship

By Joe O’Shansky

I, for one, hope we’re all familiar with Tim Robinson and his Netflix opus I Think You Should Leave. The guy is a master of cringey chaos, a walking social accident waiting to happen. The question is, how does that carry over to a feature where Robinson and Paul Rudd, not unknown for his comedic chops, become friends?

As it turns out, very well. Because while Friendship is Robinson’s film, to the degree that you’re expecting him to be him, there’s a lot more going on. It’s not just a feature length episode of I Think You Should Leave (at least not totally), or even a semi-remake of The Cable Guy. Writer/director Andrew DeYoung has crafted something in an adjacent nexus, and turns it all into his own anxiety-laden, mid-life crisis vision of loneliness, disconnection and emotional entropy.

And, yeah, somehow that’s really fucking funny.

Robinson is Craig, a marketing executive who, with his wife, Tami (Kate Mara) and son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) are about to sell their house and move elsewhere. They inadvertently receive a package for a new neighbor, Austin (Rudd), a local weatherman. Craig delivers the parcel and they strike up an immediate bromance, despite Craig’s impending move. Love blossoms until it doesn’t, which winds up being the consistent theme. Afterwards, it gets weirder. Like a lot.

I’m being vague (sort of), and most of that is in the trailer, but the joys of not knowing what you’re getting yourself into when it comes to a movie like Friendship pays massive dividends. An aggressively mumblecore/absurdist black comedy that might look like a Duplass flick to some, something like Jeff, Who Lives at Home, but DeYoung is channeling a metal indie aesthetic that is total anti-comedy. Think Neil Hamburger, but even more sad, where a Slipknot song becomes a narrative device.

I mean, there’s a lot here. Not just a satire of bro culture, or corporate culture, or familial dynamics. “You guys kiss on the lips?” Craig says as he seems to realize for the first time that his wife and possible son kiss on the lips. The film buries the lede as to why Craig is the way he is (I have a theory), and moments like that, when you begin to think maybe Craig doesn’t really know Steven or his family, all of that, along with the pressures of being a marketing exec, which sounds like the worst fucking job on earth, that all throws his mental centrifuge into chaos. His center can’t hold, and he does everything he knows to correct that, to connect, often with heartbreaking consequences. I’m not particularly prone to feeling anxiety (unless I’m paying attention to the real world), but Robinson induces a cortisol overdose like I haven’t felt since Sandler in Uncut Gems.

In that regard the performances are damn near perfect. DeYoung got exactly what he wanted from his cast, Rudd, Robinson and Mara, and it’s hard to think of a more singular vision for what goes down. Kinda like Jody Hill, DeYoung knows exactly what he wants to make and it’s going to be specific. On paper, yes, Rudd and Robinson being frenemies seems easy, let’s put that in the Apatow pipeline, or whatever. It almost writes itself. But Friendship is much more than the sum of its parts.

The arthouse verite thing only serves to magnify the low key anxiety of its autonomous yet warmly human characters, making their own life-changing decisions, whether it’s the weatherman changing shifts, a wife who wants to get back to where she started, or a neurodivergent father who goes down the rabbit hole of never knowing if ruining everything is normal because he doesn't have the capacity to know it’s not funny (the irony being that it’s hilarious). Ultimately what I love is that sense of realizing that you’re on a ride with all of them, and you have no idea where we’re all going.

8/10

Freaky Tales

By Joe O’Shansky

It’s difficult to articulate why you fell in love with a movie at first sight when you want everyone who might read it to go in cold. I definitely went in cold with Freaky Tales. Aside from noticing a poster proclaiming that Oakland was hella weird in 1987, a smattering of positive reactions, with comparisons to several films I like/love, that’s all I had to go on, outside of it featuring Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn. And I fell in love.

Then I saw it. Then, I saw it again. It’s a movie that demands a big screen and a 10,000 watt surround system. To be enjoyed in a (likely unpopulated) theater with a buddy, at least. All of that is largely due to Lionsgate fucking up the release, inadvertently or otherwise, but that’s another story. Thankfully I did rope a buddy into it and (spoiler alert) he loved this bad boy, too.

So I’m not really gonna tell you what happens. By the time time you read this it’ll be streaming (it hits VOD on April 25th, 2025). So, on that day, just turn out the lights, fire this punk rock masterpiece up in the highest fidelity at your disposal, and definitely smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Though, I will tell you 10 Reasons why Freaky Tales is the shit, in the vaguest possible terms.

Nazi/Punk gang warfare.

Samurai All-Stars

A non-linear, interlocking anthological tale of strife, corruption and vengeance in a very special place and time.

Surprising, period specific cameos!

Creativity. From shifting aspect ratios, to ultra-stylized, bloody action, to animated thoughts fucking you in the face. You will not know what’s coming at you next, or when. Anyone telling you this is Stranger Things in Oakland is wrong.

Minor criticism: Psytopics is underbaked as a deus ex machina device but, like an underbaked chocolate chip cookie, kinda better that way.

Jay Ellis is a 100% badass.

Really the whole cast rules, with Ellis, Pascal (also a bad motherfucker), and Mendelsohn (perfecting the word “creep”) being the obvious stand outs. Special shout out to Angus Cloud’s ASMR hitman. RIP, dude.

If you hear, “DIE NAZI SCUM!” and don’t pump your fist, I don’t want to know you.

It’s funny as fuck.

I probably said too much, but there it is. Besides, you’ll have no idea how it all fits together anyway. The joy is in the discovery.

Freaky Tales is now available on Digital VOD.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Toons Movie

By Joe O’Shansky

I don’t know where to begin when it comes to what Looney Toons, Chuck Jones, and all artists at the Termite Terrace meant to me as a kid. Their insane, animated Saturday morning baubles lit my brain up like a psychedelic firework. I guess kids feel like that all the time, just pure exploration and joy, which I’ve long since forgotten, but is still weird to see. The good kind of insanity. Unlike the current kind.

I’m almost 54, so I haven’t been to a theatrical Looney Toons film in around forty years. Even then it was probably just a “best of” compilation of the old episodes during a summer matinee when you had to do something with kids who were out of school. The Day the Earth Blew Up is the first theatrical Looney Toons movie I’ve seen on purpose since back then, so it was something of a surreal experience.

The plot is as cartoonish as you could hope for in just the right, retro way. A meteor (or is it?) from outer space busts up the roof of an already crumbling house owned by one Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza). It lands in a field a few miles away, where the scientist who was tracking it (Fred Tatasciore) discovers the crash site, pays a visit, and is overtaken by a funky green goo.

Meanwhile, the local gum company, Goodie Gum, is launching an exciting new flavor for worldwide release. When Daffy and Porky realize their dilapidated home is about to get razed by a pair of Karen-esque HOA members (voiced by Lorraine Newman and Wayne Knight), and they only have a week to come up with the money to make repairs, they get jobs at Goodie Gum, where they meet flavor scientist Petunia Pig (Candi Milo), who is in charge of the roll out of the new flavor.

Daffy and Porky are both psyched to have gotten jobs to save their home, and both become enamored of Petunia. All of that happens just in time for that goo-infected scientist show up and contaminate the gum with the goo. He only has one mission. Get people to chew gum for a higher purpose. When he first turns around (with glowing green eyes) after tainting the gum, sees Daffy, then points a Donald Sutherland-level finger at him and groans “Chew”, I thought he was accusing Daffy of being a Jew. Like, damn, that got left-field dark. I figured it out, though.

It gets way more absurd afterwards. Wonderfully so. Suspension of disbelief is only where you want to look for it, otherwise just take the ride, which is one of among many reasons that, if you were raised on shit like this to begin with, it becomes quite clear how much love, care, and attention to detail is being paid to these legends, who are trying to save their own world from a supreme invader (Zazlov?), not to mention the reverence for the artists who inspired them.

The adherence to hand animation is the reason it all works so well. Whatever current crop of animators Warner Bros. has on hand, they have placed themselves in the realm of the masters who started it all. The shifts in animation styles were lovely (with hat tips to Saul Bass and Al Hirschfeld’s distinctive work). That, combined with the whiplash pacing of the comedy, that reminds me of the coked out comic rapidity that the Zuckers and Abrhams pulled off with something like Airplane!, all work wonderfully. Just throwing every gag at the wall to see what sticks. The fact that this is hand-drawn to such detail is remarkable. You don’t really see much of that on the big screen anymore. More so, when you consider how that kind of arduous work has to sell a million visual gags coming at you like an ADD sugar high.

All of that is supported by a fantastic voice cast, and some very appropriate, whacky scoring. It was weird to willingly want to see The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, but I felt like I had to because I’ll probably never see anything quite like that in a theater again.

Though Coyote vs. Acme looks like it could be the new Roger Rabbit, so who knows? Fuck Zazlov.

Black Bag

Editors Note - Today we’ve got a guest review from Joe O’Shansky. Joe is an award winning film critic who has written for The Tulsa Voice and Urban Tulsa as well as many other outlets. Today he shares with us a review of Steven Soderbergh’s newest espionage thriller Black Bag. - Charles Elmore

The filmography of Steven Soderbergh is about as marvelous as any film lover could hope for. From his low-budget indie nascence, with groundbreakers like Sex Lies, and Video Tape and King of the Hill, to the trippy intellectualism of Schizopolis and Kafka (films I saw on IFC in the ‘90s when they still played indie flicks, as opposed to the endless marathons of Everybody Loves Raymond).

Fact is, I was always on board with his cinematic muses.

When he later broke into the mainstream with Hollywood-esque blockbusters like Erin Brockovich and Traffic, I got the sense that Soderbergh’s main muse lies with riding the line between commercialism and art. For my money, my absolute favorite film (from not just him, but in life) is 1998’s Out of Sight. But there’s an eclectic slew of great flicks after, like Magic Mike, the 2011 actioner Haywire, his Ocean’s Trilogy, and the epic Che Duology peppering the ‘Aughts and early ‘10s. That is until 2013’s Side Effects was announced to be his last theatrical release. Soderbergh’s retiring from feature films? Bummer. That guy ruled.

Turns out retiring from theatrical movies is the one thing about movies that he isn’t good at. Which is how we have his latest proof of cool, Black Bag.

George (Michael Fassbender, rocking a turtleneck like no other), is a British operative in England, along with his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), working for an unnamed intelligence agency, along with their colleagues, Clarissa (Marisa Abela), Freddie (a glorious Tom Burke) and Dr. Zoe (Naomie Harris), the resident psychoanalyst who seems to know all of their secrets, even though all of them can refuse a question by compartmentalizing their role as “black bag” situation.

Anyway, a piece of software that could wind up killing tens of thousands of people escapes into the wild. George is conscripted to find out who among his group is the leaker of said software. And George doesn’t fuck around when it comes to a job.

Soderbergh hasn’t lost his mojo. Controlled, stylish, and cool, Black Bag is ultimately about the relationships of a group of work besties who seem perfectly willing to kill the other if that was the mission. Wearing its European, John Le Carré meets James Bond, espionage roots on its sleeve, the script by David Koepp leaves little fat on the bone. Stripped down and straight forward, Koepp nails these smart, sexy, dangerous and archetypal characters, while balancing the immediacy of the taut story with a sense of wry humor under it all that made me realize (perhaps for the first time) why guys like Raimi, Spielberg and Soderbergh like David Koepp so much.

The performances are controlled and magnetic. Once this cast grabs you, you’re on the edge of your seat, even when you’re not sure where the train is going. Fassbender is the gravity that pulls them all in, but if it’s something Soderbergh knows as well as anything else, it’s how to frame compelling performances with a killer soundtrack and sumptuous visuals.

Those sumptuous visuals are shot by Soderbergh himself -under the nom de camera Peter Andrews - while the avant garde score is once again provided by longtime collaborator David Holmes, whose soundtrack for Out of Sight should be shot into space so that other forms of life might have their frenulum minds blown by some Top 10 Best Soundtracks of all time shit. Seriously, buy everything that man has ever done.

But, yeah. Soderbergh is a master of tone and tension, among many other things, and Black Bag is a prime example of why.

• Joe O’Shansky

Late Night With The Devil

written by Charles Elmore

Late Night With The Devil

written & directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes

Starring David Dastmalchian, ian Bliss, Laura Gordon & Ingrid Torelli

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

Late Night with the Devil debuted in theaters this past spring as a standout entry in the found footage sub-genre of horror and has now found a home streaming on SHUDDER. Written and directed by sibling duo Cameron and Colin Cairnes, the film evokes a nostalgic, golden-age-of-television aesthetic, with creepy vibes reminiscent of a pre-Internet era when late-night programming and public access TV could send shivers down your spine. It’s an atmospheric horror piece, relying more on ambiance and clever scares than on overtly horrific acts.

Completed in 2023 and released in 2024, Late Night with The Devil stars a perennial that-guy David Dastmalchian, most recognizable as a frequent collaborator of Christopher Nolan and Denis Villenueve, who pops up in many movies like Dune, or the Ant-Man Series. Here he gets an opportunity as the lead and commands the entirety of this 93 minute high-wire act of genre film making. Dastmalchian gets to play a bit against his own type, as the straight man, although here, in specific terms, a straight man with more of a darker, more complex, nuanced to his background than say your typical Dick Snyder would be in a film like this.

The film also features Ingrid Torelli, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, and Faysal Bazzi, each playing pivotal roles in the nightmarish events that unfold. Bazzi’s Christou, a magician performing seemingly harmless parlor tricks, sets the stage for a dramatic confrontation with Torelli’s devil-possessed cult-survivor teen. Gordon’s character, Torelli’s psychologist, adds emotional depth, as all three characters spiral into the chaos that surrounds the infamous 1977 broadcast that led to the show's banishment from television.

The setup is reminiscent of occult-themed shows from the Sci-Fi Channel or USA Up All Night, introducing us to Jack Delroy, a late-night host with ambitions to rival Johnny Carson. Delroy’s failure to match Carson’s success pushes him to take more extreme measures to boost ratings, turning his show into something akin to The Jerry Springer Show, albeit with more sinister undertones. Dastmalchian’s portrayal mixes sincerity with desperation, perfectly capturing the slow unraveling of Delroy’s psyche as he chases fame.

Delroy's personal life mirrors his professional decline, as his wife, a Broadway actress, fades into the background of his rising career, ultimately succumbing to cancer. Simultaneously, Delroy’s involvement with a secretive, Masonic-like group adds layers to the story, as he seemingly strikes a Faustian bargain that only intensifies his eventual downfall.

The film reaches its climax on Halloween 1977, during a live broadcast meant to capitalize on “Sweeps week”, but instead, it unleashes unimaginable evil into homes across America. The Cairnes brothers' clever use of 1970s television technology and visual grammar adds a haunting realism to the events, reminiscent of the documentary-style aesthetics used in The Blair Witch Project and The Last Broadcast.

Much like high water marks in the pseudo-doc and found footage genres like Cannibal Holocaust or Man Bites Dog, the film attempts to blurs the line between fiction and reality through various visual approximations to the media of the era. The unaired “broadcast” is shown in a low-res, 4x3 aspect ratio, capturing the fuzzy, overly-saturated look of 1970s CRT televisions, evelating the sensation that we are watching a lost artifact from cable access history. The filmmakers further employ a black-and-white documentary style from the same era, evoking the observational cinema of Pennebaker and the Maysles brothers, bringing to mind historical moments like the moon landing or Vietnam War footage. The contrast between these styles reflects the chaotic, unsettling events of the show’s taping.

The real power of Late Night with the Devil lies in its ability to make you question what’s real. The film teases viewers with a sense of verisimilitude—just enough for us to wonder, "Did this actually happen?" It taps into old urban legends, like the politician who shot himself on live TV, or the infamous tales of satanic panic in the ’70s and ’80s. This fine balance between reality and fiction is one of the film’s strongest qualities.

This is essentially a psychological horror as well. A movie where you're as much guessing if this could easily be a projection of the characters crumbling psyche as it is legitimately happening as depicted, as Rosemary says in Rosemary's Baby: “This is no dream. This is really happening.” And in the case of Late Night with the Devil a reality that leaves Delroy shattered by the end. Possession vs Hypnotism plays a heavily into the finale, percolating an intriguing side argument between hypnotism, at the hands of a master magician versus true genuine transmission and communication with an otherworldly, even spiritual presence - whether they be benevolent or benign- is an oftentimes interesting argument swirling around the margins of this horrific, terrifying, creepy slow-burn of moviemaking.

Interesting dialogs and conversations often bubble and fade at the edges of LNWTD, not just in the background of characters like the Floor Director or the Makeup Artist all the way up to how other characters motivations are revealed and connected to the finale. Back story constantly careens and crashes against each other as the moment of reckoning ticks closer with every toss to commercial break.

To me, what feels like the only note of deflation, my only disappointment with LNWTD -and most modern horror films like this - is that they could have gone harder into the horror of what leads to the confrontation. When the devil comes and a bill is due and a character must stand and face the receipt showing the basis, the origin, the genesis of that agreement could have gone shown us more, we could’ve seen more clearly the faustian bargain that Delroy is eluded to have made up in the secretive environs of the California redwoods.

I had hoped, by the time the camera pulls out to reveal the truth of what we've been witnessing for the last 20 minutes of Late Night with the Devil- In a year where movies are being noted for how great their final 30 minutes are, from the substance to late night with the devil to strange darling, that in the last several minutes of this film, when they could have clocked us with more gut punch psychology and pathos than gory thrills, instead simply deciding to just tie it all up everything nicely.

While Late Night with the Devil is masterfully crafted, my one disappointment is that the horror could have delved deeper. The film hints at a Faustian bargain, but we’re left wanting more detail and exploration of Delroy’s fateful deal with the devil. The film’s final 30 minutes, though satisfying, could have packed more psychological impact rather than tying things up neatly.

Late Night with the Devil is a fantastic entry in the found footage horror sub-genre. Cameron and Colin Cairnes, along with Dastmalchian’s standout performance, deliver a gripping film on par with The Blair Witch Project or Cannibal Holocaust. It’s only that, having seen so many predecessors, this viewer was left wanting just a bit more depth. I eagerly await more from the minds that brought this demented work to life.

-Charles Elmore