I am all ears for as long as a rant you've got. Because even when it comes to my basic ass understanding how television in the 70's worked, this was not it.


Not that this should be super important to how we receive the film. But when this is one of the elements that critics try and play as if the film was gangbusters on the era-specific details, it's just an immediate 'nope' if you have any observational or memory recall powers at all.


The so called experts don't have a clue what they are talking about.

There are many times when the positive reception does just that. And that is something that they like.

There's no "apathy" in understanding that the vast entertainment conglomerates aren't going to respond to anything other than commercial success. That's simply a fact of life, it's what they have been doing since Hollywood was born. Sure, there are times when a studio exec will green light a personal pet project that may not seem to have a lot of commercial prospects.

But, on the whole, studios will always jump on whatever's most popular and try to milk it to death.

We do not have to feel "apathy" about it; we can definitely vote with our wallets, but at the end of the day, whatever ends up making the most millions is what the studios will want to emulate.

I don't think that's true at all. I think it's pretty obvious that people have more entertainment alternatives than ever before. There's dozens of movies at the multiplex, 100s of shows and 1000s of movies available for streaming. There's social media, online gaming, and a lot of other options.

So when a low-budget movie hits $10 million at the box-office, it's a good sign that the movie was fun for a whole lot of people - they definitely had a lot of other options.

They've made a pretty big splash with this movie, and I think a lot of folks, myself included, are very eager to watch whatever they make next.

There's also a little something called "suspension of disbelief" ;)

Not sure how long this rant will turn out but…

Basically, pre-60s, broadcast tv was shot on 35mm and around the time of Carson, which this film poses as the competing late show, shifted to Quadruplex videotape, which is a 2” tape format. The limitations of this format are that it cannot pause or do variable speed playback (which screws up a big sequence of this film) and it only has a resolution of 300p (less than VHS).

Due to the format dying out in the 80s, a metric ton of the show (including most of Carson) is lost, which would’ve made the salvaging of the film an even bigger deal than it just being a cursed episode. Additionally, these necessitated huge machines for playback and only exist now for archival purposes, so that’s a pretty big hurdle for your low budget indie film to get over if you wanted to film it properly.

However, I feel there are two choices that were financially viable and would’ve pulled off the era’s aesthetic: film digitally (as they did), then either replicate the aesthetic of 35mm, which can easily be done in Da Vinci Resolve with proper halation and grain, or transfer the digital video to tape then back to digital.

The latter would probably be most effective as faking tape aesthetics usually looks wrong (see the VHS franchise) and pros that really want that look use the transfer technique because it works and it’s relatively inexpensive. Plus, the difference to the eye between 2” quadruplex and 1” tape is negligible.

Both solutions would’ve been preferable to taking 4K images and digitally softening them, which doesn’t look anything like either format that it could’ve been shot in at the time.

This issue becomes compounded by the backstage footage which apparently just exists? With no real justification as to why a separate crew was filming them in what I can only presume is handheld 16mm, despite it lacking the proper grain and texture of film shot handheld in that era.

I admit, this is technical nitpicking but when your premise relies on the belief of this being some kind of documentary or found footage, this type of fidelity to the format becomes a necessity.

Had they gone the transfer to tape and back approach, perhaps some of the slipshod digital effects like the vomit (which clearly should’ve been practical) would’ve been effectively obscured and felt outlandish yet “real?”

But the employ of AI in the construction of the bumpers, the poorly rendered CG effects, and the complete disinterest in attempting an accurate look imply and general disinterest in the finer details and taking the easiest route possible. I get it. Filmmaking is hard as hell. But when I get the sense that the filmmakers thought less about their attempt than I have as a viewer (which is rare), I become a tad irritated.

So because they have not put forth the thought or effort for me to buy in, when they completely break away from the format in its final act (guess they couldn’t get Ironside back to explain what we were just looking at), the film begins to feel in bad faith. They broke the concept because they never really believed in it enough to begin with.

And it’s a shame because they had the premise, set design (outside of the AI posters) and performers to deliver.

But hey, I’m glad everyone else had so much fun.

Most of us who watched it in a theater had fun because we could understand it's just a darned movie, not something to be micro-analyzed to death. :D

Cool

I can't believe I'm agreeing with FilmBuff. "This couldn't work because back then they shot on Quadruplex!" is valuable trivia for nerds, but hardly a reason the film doesn't work. Can't people suspend their disbelief anymore? Apart from some poor CGI, like the vomit, and the sporadic use of AI, which is always unacceptable, this was really well-made and fun. The denouement of supernatural guilt was a little bit disappointing in how glaringly obvious/Aronofskian it got but anything that came before was a good time

I guess you could nitpick and bemoan and so on, but what for? It's not like this film tried to be arthouse. Crumbs has the right to hate it and voice it strongly, of course, but there are dozens of films more deserving of such harsh treatment, starting with almost the entirety of Marvel and DC, for one.

Specifically, how?

I very much had a problem with how it began, and how it ended, but not so much the ending itself. I thought, once it got going, it was handled effectively enough to convey the sense of impending doom

Ya, exactly. Worry about that for a second.



I'm wondering if I would have rather watched a hacky half assed super hero movie, or this. And I think the answer is still this, because at least I hated this. Where some second rate superhero movie would probably just leave no impression at all. But it's almost objectively not a well made movie. It's extraordinarily bad. And also trust me, I am more than able to take a movie like this not very seriously, and just run with it. But nope, not with this one. I refuse. It wasn't even good at being amusing trash. At being entertainment. Awful.

And as for all those techincal elements that MKS outlined, while technically irrelevant to whether or not this is a good or a bad movie, absolutely have validity when the claims by many critics are how well this movie reproduced this time period. It doesn't. It was disgustingly lazy in that regard. And it shows how incredibly ignorant most critics are.

If anything, the worst part of this movie may have been how it handles the supposed sense of impending doom. It diffuses tension constantly. It's inert. It does nothing.


You could absolutely do a master class with this film in how not to build tension. One of those shot by shot things which, frankly, they should do more with terrible movies like this, and not the good ones. You always learn more from things that do everything wrong.

The interruptions didn’t help that much, although they were meant to set up the impending doom, but when it reverted back to the interviews, especially with the girl, I did feel a sense of dread. Tension slowly crept up and you knew the premise was a bad idea but since he was desperate for viewers, he forged along anyways.*
It worked a tad more for me then You, obviously, but how do you feel it could have been handled better? What could they have done better to convey this for you? What do you feel would have presented on amore believable manner?
I apologize if you already covered this, I’m just too lazy tonight to go over the previous posts.

No, I didn't cover any of that. A lot of it would be the kind of things that I think would be hard to articulate without having the scene in front of us. Very subtle things about the timing of an edit, or the placement of the camera. The things that, even if only done slightly wrong, can completely throw the effect of a movie off balance. Or at least they can for me.



But I'd probably be happy to find specific scenes, and try and articulate what is going wrong with them. But not when I'm full of Friday beer. I'm not up to the task at the moment. Not that it would be an easy task when I'm sober either, but it might be interesting to at least try.


Maybe.

No problem, I was mostly curious anyways. I do wish they wouldn’t have spoiled so much at the very beginning, and effectively made it easier to predict, but the little girl and Dalstmachian were pretty effective in their roles. I think that helped it quite a bit

I liked the aesthetic and atmosphere of the film. I couldn't care less if it looked like those shows from the 70s. I never saw any of them and even if I did, this wouldn't have to look like them. The film was funny, too.

I think it was never meant to be taken seriously, hence the idea that it dissolves tension in an unsatisfying manner doesn't matter that much to me. When the little girl appeared and started speaking, I thought "Wow, they're really going for that creepy girl thing and while it works, it's also so obviously on the nose, this is so campy!". And I think this film plays with that idea of taking it with a grain of salt and enjoying it in that, if not ironic, then campy way. It's a black comedy.

Yeah, there's value in watching bad films and that value is exactly that you learn how to not make films. However, I'm so deep into my cinephilic hellhole that I don't think I care whether a film was made in the wrong way anymore or had some errors or bad craftsmanship. All that matters is whether it works as the final product. I watched too many cheap SOV scuzzf*cks, Taiwanese trash erotica, and Z-grade monster/sci-fi/worst movies ever made (in their original version, not that MST3K crap!!!) to be bothered by how to 'properly' do something cinematically. Now, when it's done properly and well, I can appreciate it. But when it isn't and it works, I can appreciate it, too. My psychic senses are tingling and I feel you'll respond that the final product didn't work for you either/at all. That's fine. In a minute, I'm about to watch another SOV horror crap.

But before resuming my bad film marathon, let me mention that before watching Late Night With the Devil, I 'prepared' myself by watching Perverse Preachers, Fascist Fundamentalists and Kristian Kiddie Kooks (1991) and Demonic (2018) to get into that paranormal/weird TV vibes/mood. I thought Late Night... successfully extended that vibe by mimicking the exact same feeling of the confusion between "This is ridiculous and fake!" and "This is ridiculous and fake but kinda creepy and even creepier if it's not demons but people doing it and as such it's real because people are doing it for gains and abusing others in the process!".

Hate to use the majority/appeal to authority tactics, but I have a few cinephile friends and they all liked it quite a lot. One of them is particularly strict with films and hates most empty entertainment/rates films very 'objectively', but was apparently enamored with the style and humor of this film and found it 'worthwhile' in his own words.

How does you not caring about the craft and technical elements explain how it is well-made?

It's well-made because it crafts 70s aesthetics that finely mimic the Satanic panic era of the time and delivers the kooky atmosphere associated with it, too.

If your standards for well-made are as high as Onibaba, Csillagosok, katonak, Spalovac mrtvol, or Onna no mizumi then no, of course, it's not that well-shot.

If your standards for montage are as high as Chelovek s kinoapparatom. Xia nu or Napoleon then no, of course, it's not that well edited.

When I say it's well-made, I don't mean it's a visual masterpiece or that the director is a virtuoso. I merely mean that if you want a solid throwback aesthetic to be taken with a grain of salt, this indie film delivers on that.

How, SPECIFICALLY, is that aesthetic well done?

How the hell do I know/remember/care? I'm not a film maker / film technician. I just experience the film and tell whether it works for me or not.

Then probably not the best practice to dismiss criticism from someone who does.

Have a good one!

Such information is valuable, but I don't have to know what camera and what lenses were used to shoot, say, Seconds to decide it's a visual masterpiece. It is incredibly aesthetic visually, and just watching the film is enough to tell. Similarly, I don't need to know how the 70s look was achieved in Late Night With the Devil to decide it's close enough to the 70s vibe for me to enjoy it. Of course, you can disagree and say it looks nothing like the 1970s, but I already addressed that point before and said I don't think it really matters anyway. I just think it's close enough and good enough, you don't. Maybe my standards are too low. I can accept this sort of explanation, but regardless, I'd love you to tell me what are your favorite:
1. Films that reproduce the 1970s aesthetic. (Or films that reproduce any sort of old-school aesthetic if you don't know any for that decade specifically.)
2. Films that are visual masterpieces. Let's say your top 10 best-looking movies.