If its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score is anything to go by, we're in for a treat with new found footage horror movie Late Night with the Devil, which has just unveiled its first trailer.
Starring David Dastmalchian, who recently appeared in spooky flicks The Boogeyman and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, the 1970-set outing follows late night talk show host Jack Delroy, who gets more than he bargained for when he asks a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) to invite the subject of her most recent book, the sole survivor of a a Satanic church's mass suicide, during a live broadcast.
"In the '70s and '80s, there was something slightly dangerous about late-night TV. Talk shows in particular were a window into some strange adult world," writer-director duo Cameron and Colin Cairnes previously explained to Variety. "We thought combining that charged, live-to-air atmosphere with the supernatural could make for a uniquely frightening film experience."
In an amusingly meta way, the teaser, which you can watch above, plays out clips from a Halloween special of Delroy's show Night Owls, as a narrator recalls how the live TV event "shocked the nation". What happened was real, they suggest, and that what viewers are watching is the "recently discovered master tape of what went to air that night".
"The electrifying, playful Late Night With the Devil has all the ingredients to be one of the year’s most successful indie horror popcorn movies, giving the Cairnes brothers the place in the international spotlight that they have so long deserved," gushes AWFJ.org critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.
"Devilishly good fun," writes ScreenHub's Stephen A. Russell, while Inverse's Andy Crump labels the film as "a brilliant take on the mockumentary that meets the style's brief without skimping on the good stuff".
This isn't the first time streaming service Shudder has put out a film that revolves around a live feed being interrupted by a supernatural force, either. In 2019, the platform added The Cleansing Hour to its catalogue, which stars Smile's Kyle Gallner and Ryan Guzman as two friends who stage an exorcism on YouTube. Things go south when one of their patient, who just so happens to be the former character's fiancé, is possessed by a real demon who starts threatening the nature of their relationship.
Late Night with the Devil opens in select US and UK theaters on March 22, before streaming exclusively on Shudder from April 19. For more chills coming your way, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies.
