SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Late Night With The Devil. If you have not seen the film yet, proceed at your own risk!
As depicted in the film Late Night With The Devil, TV host Jack Delroy had one hell of a night on October 31, 1977. He acted in desperation trying to save his struggling show from cancellation, and what transpired sent him into a spiraling nightmare. The question remains, however: did Jack believe in the supernatural prior to the horrific events of that evening? According to star David Dastmalchian, he at the very least wanted to.
I posed the aforementioned spoiler-y question to the actor when I interviewed him about his work on Late Night With The Devil earlier this month – as captured in the video at the top of this article. He doesn’t think that Jack Delroy was sure about the existence of the supernatural prior to his fateful Halloween broadcast, but it’s more accurate to say that he shared an outlook with Fox Mulder from The X-Files:
Jack Delroy desperately wanted to believe that the supernatural existed, as do I, Dave Dastmalchian. In the face of science and evidence and facts, there are still feelings that linger in between the binaries of reality. And I believe that Jack, like most if not all of us, wanted to believe that there was something true that was lingering in those shadows. And as what happened historically on that fateful night, things certainly unfolded in a way that I think he definitely felt pretty strongly by the end of the night, one way or the other. I'm excited for audiences to see how they feel about it.
I think it’s safe to say that witnessing first-hand what Lilly D'Abo (Ingrid Torelli) could do perfectly demonstrated to Jack Delroy that evil was real, but not to be ignored in this discussion are the mysterious activities in which he participated as a member of the secret society known as The Grove. There is clearly some manipulation of the supernatural going on there along with the satanic cult to which Lilly belonged – which is ultimately linked to the death of Jack’s wife, Madeline (Georgina Haig).
Late Night With The Devil is certainly a movie that demands rewatch once you know how all the action unfolds and the different pieces fit together. Written and directed by sibling duo Colin and Cameron Cairnes, the film rode a huge wave of buzz into theaters thanks in part to a stamp of approval from horror legend Stephen King, and it arrived in sixth place at the box office this past weekend. It’s now playing in locations around the country thanks to IFC Films, and it will be available to stream with a Shudder subscription at an unknown date in the future.
