Late Night with the Devil: Chasing the White Whale

Late Night With The Devil

When I can’t wait and must write a solo review of something, it usually means I really liked it. Or I’m chasing SEO. Or both. Or, sometimes, I have long-form thoughts that go beyond the movie. And, I guess, occasionally all three… This one probably qualifies as that last one.

Going into a movie I know little about is usually the best method in my book. I didn’t even see the trailer for this movie. I had no knowledge of what it was about outside of the title and the lead actor, as I had seen the poster. Polka-Dot Man or, as I first encountered him, that dude Harvey Dent interrogated in The Dark Knight, David Dastmalchian. Yes, I did have to Google the spelling. Allentown’s own. Yes, I did just learn that. I don’t believe I could name any of the others actors in this movie with a gun to my head.

I could speculate the movie had something to do with late night television, which I was right about, but I wanted to be surprised by the narrative. This is also why I really enjoy the Monday night preview screening program Regal does (and that AMC blatantly copied after it proved successful.) I can see a movie I have not even heard of until that day.

To make a long story short, I didn’t set expectations for this movie. It is far easier to enjoy a movie on its first viewing without expectations. A vast majority of the movies I see I will only see once, even those I really enjoy. Hindsight is 20/20, but lack of expectations tends to turn one’s brain off in a way that keeps escapism as escapism.

I knew the film was in limited release and had a high audience and critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. And that there was an AI art controversy that shouldn’t matter. I had heard of the movie about a week or so before I saw it, when the PR firm doing the film’s marketing said it grossed $666,666 in its opening weekend. A clever bout of PR lying. What got me to check if my area had the movie yet (I live in central PA, so my media market is typically not first or even third) was that Jeremy Jahns, by far my favorite movie reviewer, reviewed the movie. It was showing at my local indie theater and my local Regal, but not AMC. I saw it on a Tuesday as Regal’s non-matinee prices are exorbitant highway robbery. (Regal does a discounted price of $6.50 on Tuesdays all day.)

All of this background to say I loved the movie. It’s my favorite 2024 movie so far. I don’t know if it’ll retain the title like Nobody, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Oppenheimer, but it will almost surely make my top ten if not top five or three.

As should be very evident by now, I love movies. Virtually every genre and era. When a movie speaks to me on a fundamental level, where my body has a physical reaction to it, the movie is something special. This isn’t always a good thing, of course. I got physically ill from the 2004 prequel to The Exorcist. Whether that was partially due to eating two boxes of Buncha Crunch with little fluid is immaterial…

This movie gave me chills, a reaction that I would ascribe as close to shock. I thought about it the entire ride home and for a little bit afterwards. The song that was playing in my car? “White Whale” by Shadow Academy, one of Dan Avidan’s five current bands. I started to intently listen to the lyrics of the song as I drove away from the theater, putting it on repeat to make that easier. Those lyrics are very apropos. The lead character of the movie, a late-night host in perpetual also-ran status against Johnny Carson in 1970s America, is chasing the white whale of being number one in late night. At the expense of virtually everything. Good taste, his relationships with others, etc.

The movie is a fake documentary-style in a found footage sort of vein. It is almost surely the best example of found footage I have ever seen. (Although, I have yet to see The Blair Witch Project.) Not quite a mockumentary of the Christopher Guest sort, but these events clearly aren’t real.

The pacing is deliberate and masterfully done. Only revealing to the audience what it needs to, with enough foreshadowing and minor details for the astute and observant to guess events and twists before they are actually shown. The first five or so minutes of the movie sets the scene via an opening narration: We are about to watch a single episode of a late-night show from Halloween night 1977 that was only recently “recovered.” We learn about the host and his struggles. It is revealed at the end that the narration was an opening for said fake documentary. The narrator gives me classic “In a world…” movie theater voice guy vibes, complete with dramatically stated title of the film, something the Epic Voice Guy of Honest Trailers fame is a master of.

The clever part is how most of the movie is shot just like an episode of late-night television, even having the aspect ratio of television from that era for a vast majority of the movie. The camera angles, the zoom-ins. As the gimmick is also that of live-television, it keeps a real-time pace largely from David’s perspective the entire film. It all feels incredibly authentic. When the “show” goes to break, they keep events in real-time by cutting to seamless “behind the scenes” footage shot in black and white. Full dedication to a gimmick is when a gimmick has the best chance to succeed.

Considering how much I loved this movie, I do not wish to spoil much more than I have to. I had a feeling I would like the movie, but I did not truly expect to like it as much as I did. If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to see this. It is a horror thriller, which means the scares in it are mostly of the disturbing or unsettling nature and not the gore-no that typifies slasher flicks like the Terrifier films and the Saw franchise. This is a very excellent movie. It blew me away. David deserves an Oscar nomination for his performance, seemingly his first lead actor role (at least that I’ve seen.) I don’t know if he’ll get it. I always enjoy seeing him in stuff. This is the best he’s ever been. As Jeremy Jahns said, the man does not let himself get pigeon-holed or typecast. This role should lead to many others.

The ending and style of the film don’t lend things to a sequel, but I have an idea for one. You could keep the fake documentary aesthetic, but a change of venue would do wonders.

If you need a takeaway from all this: Don’t let ambition to succeed blind you from what that pursuit does to those around you and to your own soul. That white whale might not end up feeling so great once you capture it.