Late Night with the Devil Review: Found-Footage Horror Gets a Talk-Show Twist

Is Late Night with the Devil good?

Yes — a 96 Critic Score and 72 Metascore make this one of the best-reviewed horror films in recent memory, even though a 68% Audience Score shows general viewers were more divided than the critical consensus. Colin and Cameron Cairnes build their found-footage throwback around a single 1977 talk-show set, and that formal discipline pays off: the gap between the critic and audience numbers mostly comes down to pacing, not execution, since the film spends real time establishing its host and format before letting the horror take over.

What is Late Night with the Devil about?

A struggling late-night host stages a Halloween special designed to save his show, and the stunt spirals into something he can’t control once one of his guests turns out to be hosting more than she lets on. The film frames its entire runtime as a “lost” broadcast tape, complete with the seams and glitches of 1970s television, which lets the Cairnes brothers build dread through format rather than jump scares alone. As the on-air rituals go wrong in front of a live studio audience, the host’s ambition and denial become as central to the horror as anything supernatural in the room.

Should you watch Late Night with the Devil?

If you like your horror slow-built and formally clever, this is a strong recommendation — just know the payoff arrives later than genre fans might expect. With a Letterboxd rating of 3.5 and an IMDb score of 7.0, audiences land closer to “impressed” than “terrified,” which fits a film more interested in dread and performance than in shocks. Viewers hoping for constant scares may find the opening stretch too patient, but the film’s confidence in its own conceit is exactly what earns it the strong Critic Score.

How does Late Night with the Devil compare to Ghostwatch?

The closest comparison is the 1992 BBC mockumentary Ghostwatch, another broadcast-format horror story that turns a trusted live-TV setting into the source of its scares. Both films understand that audiences lower their guard around familiar television formats, and both exploit that trust methodically rather than loudly. Where Ghostwatch leans on the illusion of an unscripted live event, Late Night with the Devil is more theatrical and character-driven, giving its host a fuller arc of ambition and unraveling rather than treating the broadcast purely as a framing device.