93 min | R | March 22, 2024 | IFC Films
A 1977 Halloween broadcast goes horribly wrong. David Dastmalchian delivers a career-defining performance. Found footage horror has never been this polished or this terrifying.
Jack Delroy hosts Night Owls, a late-night talk show losing the ratings war to Johnny Carson. On Halloween 1977, he stages a special episode designed to boost numbers. The guests include a psychic, a skeptic, and a young girl who survived a satanic cult and may still be possessed. The broadcast goes live. Things go wrong. The Cairnes brothers construct the film as recovered footage of the actual broadcast, intercut with behind-the-scenes documentary material. The format is the film’s genius. You watch a live television disaster unfold in real time with the rhythms and pacing of an actual talk show.
David Dastmalchian plays Jack Delroy with the desperate charisma of a host who knows this is his last shot. The performance is extraordinary. Dastmalchian captures the specific way a television personality maintains composure while everything collapses around him. The smile stays on too long. The jokes keep coming when they should stop. Ingrid Torelli plays Lilly, the possessed girl, with a stillness that is more unnerving than any special effect. Laura Gordon plays her handler with protective ferocity. Ian Bliss plays the skeptic with smug rationality that the evening will destroy.
Cameron and Colin Cairnes write and direct with total command of the found-footage format. The 1977 production design is flawless. The cameras, the set, the graphics, the commercial breaks all feel authentically period. The horror builds through the talk-show structure. Each segment escalates. The audience laughs nervously. The host pushes harder. The film uses the familiar rhythms of live television to make the audience complicit. You want to see what happens next. That desire is the horror.
This is the best horror film of the year. The Cairnes brothers take a limited budget and a single conceit and execute it with precision that bigger films cannot match. The found-footage genre has produced masterpieces and garbage. This belongs with the masterpieces. Dastmalchian deserves every award the industry can give him. The final ten minutes are genuinely harrowing.