Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 13 August

Late Night With the Devil (Cairnes & Cairnes, 2023)

The one con­sist­ent piece of good box office news these days is the suc­cess of hor­ror movies. Has there been one a week since I came back to this gig? It feels like it.

And these films con­tin­ue to do a great job of intro­du­cing us to new film­makers, cool new ideas, gen­er­ally restor­ing our faith in cinema as an art form.

Even if they are the kind of films I would nor­mally run a hun­dred miles from, I am glad they are there.

Here’s one I did enjoy a great deal. Easy on the gore and the shocks, this one pri­or­it­ises atmo­sphere and char­ac­ter, always a breath away from com­plete sil­li­ness but held togeth­er by a top per­form­ance by David Dastmalchian.

When you have a bril­liant idea like this – a fad­ing 70s talk­show host has one last stab at the big time by bring­ing a demon-possessed teen­age girl on to his Halloween spe­cial – you give your­self every chance of suc­cess when you then cast a ter­rif­ic char­ac­ter act­or who elev­ates every pro­ject he is involved with.

David Dastmalchian anchors Late Night with the Devil in more ways than one, and his slow real­isa­tion that he has made a very big mis­take but that he might still actu­ally have a rat­ings win­ner, is a bit of a mas­ter­class, frankly.

I really liked the subtle nod to the ori­gin­al own­ers of the land the film comes from, where Dastmalchian’s char­ac­ter (in a flash­back to hap­pi­er times) is wear­ing a tie with an indi­gen­ous Australian design. The whole thing is very classy and even mod­est hor­ror fans should enjoy it.

Also in that weekly new releases column, Civil War (also now avail­able on digit­al and phys­ic­al media), anim­ated children’s film The Tiger’s Apprentice and the Apple TV+ doc­u­ment­ary Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces.

Where to watch Late Night With the Devil

Aotearoa, Canada, Ireland, UK, Australia, USA: Streaming on AMC+/Shudder

There is a new AMC+/Shudder sec­tion on the home page. You can use those sec­tions to quickly scan for recent recom­mend­a­tions on all of the major plat­forms and media.

Further reading

Yesterday’s ‘new releases’ post suffered from a cut and paste error which made one para­graph in the Dear England sec­tion hard to under­stand. The editor-in-chief has reminded me that she is there for a reason.

Anyway, I am for­tu­nate that a cor­rec­ted ver­sion of that sec­tion has been repos­ted at Sportsfreak.co.nz, a web­site ded­ic­ated to dis­cus­sion of sport in all its forms. It is free for any­one to read and I hope you take some time out to go and do so. I’m con­scious that that sec­tion was behind the pay­wall yesterday …

In oth­er recom­men­ded read­ing, Doug Dillaman has writ­ten a rare update. I post every day, he posts roughly annu­ally. You can decide for your­self which is the best value deal.

It’s a thought­ful piece about – but not con­fined to – the pleas­ures of watch­ing movies without a self-consciously crit­ic­al eye.