Film / Late Night with the Devil

"Well, Night Owls, we've got a heck of a show in store for you tonight!"

"You get out there, Mr. Midnight... and you knock ’em dead."

Late Night With The Devil is a 2024 independent horror film directed by Australian siblings Cameron and Colin Caernes, presented in a Found Footage format. It was released in theaters March 22 and then to Shudder on April 19.

The film stars David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, a 1970s talk show host who — as a Halloween night ratings stunt — invites June (Laura Gordon), a parapsychologist, and Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), the teenage survivor of a Satanic church's mass suicide, onto the show.

Needless to say, things go terribly wrong.

The film also stars Fayssal Bazzi as Christou, a professional clairvoyant, Ian Bliss as Carmichael Haig, a magician-turned-skeptic, and Rhys Auteri as Gus, the loyal assistant to Delroy.

Watch the trailer here.

Late Night With The Devil will be right back, after these tropes:

• The '70s: Jack's career takes place over the 1970s. It begins in 1971, and the night in question is Halloween, 1977.
• Always Someone Better: Johnny Carson is this to Delroy, and Night Owls as a whole. Even Jack's highest-rated episode, featuring the one and only appearance of his wife Madeline, puts him a point below Carson.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Early on in Lilly's TV appearance, the girl has an unnerving habit of staring directly into the camera and thus staring directly at the viewer. When Delroy remarks on it, she admits to not knowing where she's supposed to be looking while the cameras are rolling — after all, she's just a kid making her first appearance on live television. ...right?
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • The precise nature of Jack's dealings with the Bohemian Grove and "Mr. Wriggles" is left very ambiguous in the end, particularly whether or not he cut a deal with the latter intentionally.
  • Similarly, the relationship between June Ross-Mitchell and Lilly is ambiguous — while Dr. Ross-Mitchell sees herself as thirteen-year-old Lilly's protector, she's not above cashing in on the girl's situation by writing a lurid tell-all and taking her on the talk show circuit. The very public demonstration of Lilly's demonic possession eventually breaks through her seeming serenity and it clearly embarrasses and frightens her
  • A lot of Lilly's own behavior makes it very hard to tell whether she's always being possessed and manipulated by Mr. Wriggles, or if she's just a very weird kid because of her horrific upbringing. Wriggles' first words upon being summoned - seemingly genuine confusion about what's going on - suggests the latter.
  • Jack Delroy's situation at the end of the show. While Jack is the only survivor on the set, both the footage of the night and the production staff that dragged him into the back would be able to confirm everything that happened, meaning he'd not get jail due to extenuating circumstances, but, with the death of his co-host and the amount of complaints, his career is over.
• Animal Motif: Owls. The show is called Night Owls. The Happy Halloween episode title card has an owl pun. The Bohemian Grove has an owl motif, as in real life.
• Anti-Hero: Jack isn't a bad man and he's sincerely empathetic towards his guests, but he's also fame-hungry and condescending behind the scenes and fails to see the risks of exploiting Mr. Wriggles until it's too late.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: The entire point of Carmichael Haig, increasingly moreso as the night goes on, but it's also played for horror and tragedy. Jack is so understandably horrified and traumatized by the events of the night that he spends the final moments of the film trying desperately to convince himself that it was all just another hypnosis-induced hallucination despite the fact that he's currently standing amidst the slaughtered corpses of coworkers and guests.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The aired-on-TV Night Owls portions of the movie are a slightly fuzzy 4:3 television ratio, while the behind-the-scenes portions are a wider 5:3 and Deliberately Monochrome. Jack's hypnosis Nightmare Sequence is HD widescreen.
• Attention Whore: Jack desperately wants to be famous. It's also implied this is what motivates June and Carmichael as well.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Jack and Gus' acting for the show is very awkward and forced a lot of the time, if in a very endearingly dorky way. This makes it all the more notable when they increasingly break character as the night goes and start talking like normal instead of doing their snarky back-and-forth bit. Likewise, Christou initially puts on a big show acting like a hammy stage magician, but once things start going Off the Rails, he immediately slips into a far more natural voice.
• Bad Black Barf: Poor Christou spits a lot across the stage before he's taken away to ultimately die in the ambulance.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The entire plot is kicked off by Jack's desperation for ratings success and notoriety. He gets both, in the worst way possible.
• Beware the Nice Ones: After spending most of the night be pretty genial and laidback, the stress of the night causes Jack to start barking at Haig to shut up and actively calling him off for burying his head in the sand; a marked contrast from his non-combative personality seen earlier.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: Midway through the first summoning with Mr. Wriggles, the demon starts swearing vigorously, suddenly enough that the production crew fail to catch the first few curses and hastily throw in bleeps well after it's become obvious what's being said (i.e., Wriggles calling June a whore and openly saying she and Jack are fucking).
• Body Horror:
  • When Lilly gets possessed, her limbs start cracking unnaturally as she holds them at strange angles and her face gruesomely warps into a monstrous visage. Apparently "Mr. Wriggles" prefers his hosts to look more like he does. This escalates in the finale to her head splitting in half to form a gruesome maw spewing neon fire, like something out of The Thing (1982).
  • While hypnotized by Haig, Jack's sidekick, Gus, believes that he has worms crawling and wriggling underneath his skin, bursting from a cut on his neck and emerging from his stomach. The hallucination culminates in a gigantic worm pushing through his head, as he pleads for help, shortly before it is revealed to all be part of Haig's act.
• Bottle Episode: The entire film, barring the opening and the commercial break takes place on the Night Owls set.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The film closes with the audience having fled, all guests dead, and Jack snapping out of his trance to realize he has just stabbed Lilly to death on live TV. Police sirens can be heard approaching as the film cuts to credits. However, that there even was a master tape says he won't be taking the fall.
• Butt-Monkey: Gus, both in-universe and out. He's the comic foil on Night Owls, regularly on the receiving end of Jack's insults and prank stunts (which get more degrading as the ratings continue to slip). In the film proper, he's on the receiving end of abuse (from producer Leo Fiske), condescension (from Jack), humiliation (from Haig), and - ultimately - murder (from Abraxas).
• Call-Back: Midway through the show, Leo says that ratings are up and that Jack might get 40 to even 50 percent of the ratings share. In Jack's trance, D'Abo says the same thing.
• Central Theme: Sensationalism and exploitation of tragedy in the entertainment industry.
• Chekhov's Gun: Jack uses the sacrificial dagger to help cut Lilly out of her restraints after her possession. He forgets he's carrying it til seconds before the break ends, so he sets it down on the small table by his desk. After Mr. Wriggles possesses Lilly again and Jack finds himself in a hallucinating state, he ends up using a knife he finds next to his dying wife to Mercy Kill her, only for it to turn out he used the sacrificial dagger to kill Lilly on set.
• Chekhov's Skill: Jack mentions early on that Haig was one of the first to ever do mass hypnosis. He manages to trick the audience, in and out of universe, with that just before the climax.
• Cold Reading: Christou uses this to fake his "psychic powers", along with having plants in the audience. Haig calls it out and demonstrates how it works. He's also implied to have supplemented his act with hot reading.
• Creator Breakdown: In-Universe, viewers are generally of the opinion that "Night Owls" has been going downhill ever since the death of Jack's wife, becoming unconcerned with entertainment and education and more with lame shock value and ratings stunts. Sure enough, the behind-the-scenes footage makes increasingly clear that Jack hasn't been doing well emotionally since Madeline's passing and the stress of keeping the show going isn't helping.
• Creepy Child: Lilly's Dissonant Serenity is unnerving for a girl with such a traumatic backstory. Jack is clearly confused by her behavior when she first skips onstage. Of course, once the demon possessing her shows himself, she's much more overtly creepy.
• Creepy Red Herring:
  • A lot of attention is given to a still, silent man in the audience wearing an all-concealing skeleton costume. Ultimately nothing comes of him; by all appearances he's just one of the members of the audience who came in a Halloween costume... though he does make an oddly notable return appearance amid Jack's nightmare at the end, so take that as you may.
  • With his replacement red jacket, combined with his facial hair and increasingly sinister demeanor, Haig starts to look like he may actually have demonic connections, culminating in a scene where he forces worms to burst out of Jack's sidekick, Gus. However, this is revealed to be nothing more than a Mass Hypnosis trick, and Haig is killed along with the other guests when all hell breaks loose, but he does pledge allegiance and servitude to Satan the second he sees irrefutable proof of demonic activity (not that it helps him).
• Cringe Comedy: Christou's first attempt at Cold Reading flops bad when he presumes a man is a widow when he's actually just divorced; the audience (in-universe and out) promptly has to watch him backpedal hard in an attempt to hide his visible embarrassment. This takes on additional meaning when Leo Fiske's comments backstage strongly imply the man was a deliberate plant to get laughter.
• Deal with the Devil: Jack, knowingly or unknowingly, has a history with evil spirits as a result of his dealings with the Bohemian Grove, and his wife's death by lung cancer and the live destruction of his show was the price he had to pay "Mr. Wriggles" for eternal fame and notoriety.
  Good to see you again, Jack. [...] We go way back. We met amongst the tall trees.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The behind-the-scenes footage from commercial breaks is shot this way.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Some of Jack's jokes are purposefully more off-color than would be allowed today, such as a skit where he arm-wrestles a black dwarf and mocking Gus for apparently "touching" some women at a cabaret show the week before.
• Dirty Coward: Haig, after spending the entire evening openly mocking people who believe in the supernatural, reacts to a genuine demonic presence by immediately falling to his knees and proclaiming his allegiance to it in an attempt to save his own skin.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Even as undeniably weird stuff begins happening, Haig disbelieves that there's any kind of demonic activity and goes out of his way to taunt and provoke the demon due to thinking it's not real. Perhaps unsurprisingly, once the very real demon grows tired of toying with his prey and everything goes batshit, Haig is subjected to an especially gruesome death compared to everyone else; Mr. Wriggles evidently isn't the sort to tolerate criticism.
• Downer Ending: Jack gets the fame he was after, but it was in the last way he wanted. Gus, Haig, Christou, and June are all dead at Mr. Wriggle's hands and Jack kills Lilly while hallucinating. The movie ends with him desperately trying to snap himself out of a Hypnosis surrounded by all the bodies as police sirens grow closer. And even if Jack doesn't go to jail, he has to live with the knowledge that the deal he made for fame came at the cost of his wife, the woman he loved more than anything.
• Dramatic Irony: Carmichael Haig accurately calls out Christou on his Cold Reading earlier in the show and lumps in his "Minnie" reading. However, by that time, the audience has likely figured out from both Christou and Jack's reactions that, for all his fakery, Christou actually did experience something in his final reading. Which is ultimately proven right.
• Exact Words: During introductory pleasantries, Lilly reassures Jack that he doesn't need to worry about the future of the show. In fact, he'll be famous for years and years to come...
• Fire-Forged Friends: Gus, Jack's assistant on Night Owls, is implied to be his biggest supporter, taking even the most mean spirited joke in stride.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Haig turns into this as the night progresses and all the weird events start piling up. At first his skepticism is onto something and his arguments for how the supernatural events are faked are plausible, but the more things escalate, the more desperate and flailing his attempts become and the more strained his "explanations" get. This all culminates in him being proven objectively wrong and basically throwing a tantrum in response just before all hell breaks loose.
  Carmichael: I can assure you all there is no demon inside this child. Clearly, she has been placed in a hypnotic state and manipulated by the good doctor to perform her bit.
  Jack: Hypnosis? Then how do you explain the physical transformations with her skin, the voice change, there was banging on the walls!
  June: She levitated, for God's sakes!
• Fluffy the Terrible: Lilly has dubbed the demon that possesses her "Mr. Wriggles."
• Found Footage Films: Notable for the rather unique take on the "Found" aspect, as the film is framed as the rediscovered master tape of a live broadcast of the final episode made of Night Owls.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
  • Haig's hypnotism doesn't just work on Gus; the audience sees it too.
  • When Lilly is fully possessed by Mr. Wriggles, the camera zooms in on her face before cutting to static. Yet within the static, her face pushes through with an evil smile.
  • In-Universe as well, amid Jack's vision at the end, he turns to the cameras and starts begging the audience at home to turn their television sets off for their own safety.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Near the end of the introduction, a schedule shows that the Halloween special of "Night Owls" will be followed by a movie titled "Hail Abraxas".
  • Madeline's spirit can be briefly seen in several shots, unnoticed by the characters, ranging from behind Jack in the mirror during the first commercial break, a moment's flash in Lilly's hair during her first possession, and in the mirror on the table when the water glasses break.
  • During the introduction sequence, a clip from a documentary about the Grove shows a kneeling man drinking from a cup the same way Jack does in his final hallucination; the man is clearly Szandor d'Abo.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The demon Abraxas, despite being the target of worship for Szandor D'Abo's cult, is mentioned to not be the entity possessing Lilly, with "Mr. Wriggles" being deemed as likely being one of his lesser servants.
• Halloween Episode: The movie is in an in-universe example for "Night Owls", the talk show.
• Hate Sink:
  • Haig spends a majority of his time on Night Owls insulting and belittling the other guests, smugly deriding them as charlatans and is generally treated with disdain by the cast. Even Jack makes it clear during breaks that he thinks the guy is a jackass and is quicker to shut him down on air than any of the other guests. As such, very little sympathy is thrown his way when he is given a horrific death by the demon he had been provoking all night.
  • Leo Fiske, the producer of Jack's show, is very pushy and insensitive with his attempts at trying to push Night Owls in ratings. As such, he is one of the contributing factors towards Jack's obsession with achieving success.
• Hidden Depths: Jack presents himself on air as a charming, if occasionally self-deprecating host. Behind the scenes he's more conniving and focused on ratings. At the same time, he's also more emotional and concerned than he lets on, from worry about Christou's health to wondering if Madeline's spirit is there. Also, while he is clearly cynically using his guests for the night as a publicity stunt in order to boost his ratings, he seems to genuinely open to the possibility of the supernatural.
• Hollywood Satanism: The cult that Lilly was rescued from was like this with hooded robes, human sacrifice and ceremonial daggers, in a clear send-up of Satanic Panic conspiracy theories of the sort that were becoming rampant at the time the film is set.
• Homage: A young girl being possessed by a demon who goes by a silly name is clearly inspired by The Exorcist. In the end, Gus tries to protect himself during Lilly's final possession by wielding a small cross necklace and shouting "The power of Christ compels you," a direct quote from the film.
• Horrible Hollywood: The entertainment industry is portrayed as shallow, reckless, prone to exploiting people for profit, turning art into soulless commodity by sucking the humanity out of it, and generally bringing out the worst in people. That's all before the demon stuff.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The story takes place on Halloween night.
• Horror Struck: Upon seeing all hell breaking loose during Lilly's final possession, Haig the skeptic switches sides, including falling on his knees, pledging fealty, and even offering up that $500,000 check for proof of supernatural activity. "Mr. Wriggles" merely disintegrates it before killing him.
• Humiliation Conga: Gus is on the receiving end of the worst humiliation from start to finish. He's shown in the opening documentary enduring a variety of embarrassing situations ranging from having to chase down a tarantula in the audience to getting pied in the face. He's introduced in the film proper by Jack sneaking up behind him from under a bedsheet and scaring the hell out of him, who then proceeds to make several unflattering punchlines at his expense. He's the first character to openly express trepidation about the show's tactics to garner ratings but is roundly dismissed, including by producer Leo Fiske who is shown to be verbally abusive towards him (and who forbids him from leaving the set as things begin to escalate). He gets volunteered against his will for Haig's mass hypnosis trick, which involves exploiting his Scoleciphobia and causing him to rip his clothes off after hallucinating that worms are crawling out of his flesh. He's then forced to endure the humiliation of watching it on instant replay while the audience laughs at his freaking out. And finally, he ends up being the first victim of Abraxas' violent rampage after he tries and fails to ward the demon off with a cross (getting his head twisted back for good measure). Subverted in the finale where now it is Jack who is on the receiving end of humiliation and trauma, while Gus merrily goes about his business like there's nothing wrong.
• If It Bleeds, It Leads: It's mentioned that Jack becomes increasingly desperate for voting figures and courts controversy to make that happen, including arm-wrestling a dwarf.
• I'm Melting!: Haig's fate, courtesy of an extremely pissed off demon that has not taken his taunting of it all night very well.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Though he doesn't die until a little while afterwards, the first sign that something is seriously wrong is Christou's desperate coughing.
• Ironic Echo: Mr. Haig, magician-turned-skeptic, brings up the etymology of the magical phrase "abracadabra" when the characters are discussing the actual theological Abraxas. Later on, when Mr. Wriggles—one of Abraxas' servants—fully possess Lilly in the climax, Haig pledges his loyalty to the demon and offers it a half-a-million dollar check in a last moment of desperation (which he'd previously offered to anyone able to provide real evidence of the supernatural). Wriggles' reply to Haig just before gruesomely proving that it is, indeed, very real:
  "Abracadabra."
• Jackass Genie: Mr. Wriggles, like many Faustian bargain demons. Jack says he'll pay a steep price for fame and renown? Don't just give his wife a slow death by cancer as your price, make him famous by staging a massacre on live television that ends with a hypnotized Jack stabbing a thirteen year old girl to death too!
• Jerkass Has a Point: Condescending ass he may be, but Haig is right in the fact that many self-professed psychics are just deviously cunning con artists who prey on the emotionally vulnerable for their cash. The film itself acknowledges this with Christou who, prior to receiving contact from a real spirit, uses blatant hot/cold reading techniques on the audience.
• Karma Houdini: Leo Fiske, Jack's scummy producer who pushed him towards his obsession with fame, is the only other major named character besides Jack who (as far as we know) survives the night's events.
• Kick the Dog: One of Christou's "psychic readings" involves preying on a grieving family and making up kind words from their loved one who recently committed suicide, something that visibly disgusts everyone who sees through the trick, particularly Haig.
• The Lost Lenore: Jack is deeply affected by his wife Madeleine's death from lung cancer a year before the events of the film. Her death is widely considered the point where both Jack and his show took a turn for the worse.
• Lost Media: The film is framed as this, with the show being in standard definition and having a Retraux look to it. When the host has his nightmare, the film has an abrupt Frame Break into full HD widescreen.
• Madness Mantra: The film ends with Jack standing amidst the massacre on his set and repeating to himself "Dreamer, be awake", the phrase Haig used to bring Gus out of his trance, in the vain hope that this is another case of hypnosis.
• Mass Hypnosis: Haig hypnotizes the entire audience (and the viewer) into hallucinating that worms are bursting out of Gus's body, to demonstrate how the other guests are duping the audience.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In his role as a professional skeptic Haig spends the film offering believable explanations for the various paranormal events that occur, leaving it up in the air until the very end whether there's actually something demonic happening or if the show is just colluding with an accomplished con artist for a sweeps week stunt. Then the climax hits and things become very undeniably real.
• Media Scaremongering: What the Halloween "Night Owls" episode was supposed to be doing, playing off the nascent Satanic Panic with a sensationalistic fluff piece about occultism and devil worship. Things... get a little out of hand.
• Merchandising the Monster: A recurring theme through the film is people trying to exploit the supernatural for their own selfish gain. Jack and Leo do a scaremongering Halloween special about demons for the sake of cheap ratings. June uses the Abraxas cult and it's sole survivor as a source of profit through writing lurid tell-alls and touting Lilly around like a prop. Christou fakes psychic powers to con people out of their money. Even Haig relies on the possibility of the paranormal to do his professional skeptic gimmick. Predictably, it all backfires very badly by the end, as Mr. Wriggles makes his feelings about being used as a glorified walking tourist trap very clear.
• Mockumentary: The first act of the film is presented in this format, giving the audience the rundown on the events that led up to the Halloween broadcast and the backstories of the various people on the show before the footage that makes up the rest of the movie begins.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Jack doesn't mean any harm but his need to make his show popular and struggle to listen to others does result in the horrific prices he has to pay. Likewise, Leo comes off as a typical Hollywood sleazeball, but ultimately he's truthful when he tells Jack that he's just trying to do his job and keep "Night Owls" on the air, and even he certainly doesn't want anyone to get hurt.
• Neck Snap: A particularly extreme example; poor Gus gets his head twisted a complete 180 degrees around.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: In-Universe, Lilly's obvious lack of any experience with filming television causes her to do a lot of weird things on-air like constantly Spiking the Camera (and having to be reminded by Jack to look at him as they talk), none of it helped by her lack of social skills in general.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Jack Delroy stands in for variety talk show hosts of the era like Johnny Carson, a fact lampshaded by having the real Carson be Jack's professional rival.
  • Haig the Conjuror, a former magician turned investigator and vocal skeptic who promises a check for half a million dollars to anyone with genuine paranormal abilities, is clearly based on James Randi, who also offered a similar bounty for proof of psychic abilities.
  • Christou, a tall, dark, and foreign-accented psychic who is confronted on a talk show by Haig, is clearly inspired by Uri Gellar, an Israeli psychic who peaked in the 1970s. The film as a whole is obviously inspired by the episode of The Tonight Show where Carson invited Randi to confront Gellar on air. One of the other phony psychics Haig is listed as exposing specialized in bending spoons, which was Gellar's most famous trick.
  • June and Lilly: a commentary on various pop psychologists and witnesses who fed into the Satanic Panic by claiming to give the "true accounts" of cults preying on children, with the twist being that the demonic stuff is actually for real.
  • Szandor d'Abo, leader of the First Church of Abraxas, was clearly modeled after Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. The Church of Abraxas itself also takes inspiration from David Koresh and the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, regarding its confrontation with federal agencies over (among other things) "firearm offenses" leading to a siege of their compound and the death of most of its members.
• No Social Skills: Lilly was raised in a demon-worshiping cult as a human sacrifice and than spent the years after the cult's mass suicide in psychiatric care of various stripes. Although very friendly, she is also extremely earnest and forthright, to the point that it's a little unsettling for how obviously unusual it is.
• Not-So-Phony Psychic: Christou is a celebrity medium who very, very obviously relies on both hot and cold reading tactics to get results, but he actually does end up sensing the presence of both Jack's dead wife, Madeleine AKA "Minnie", and the approaching demon.
• Not So Similar: Haig tells June that they are similar for their exploitation of people, and that June's shtick of helping Lilly is no more than selfish self-promotion. Haig thinks he is superior because he doesn't try to hide what he is. The movie seems to agree until the demon inside Lilly takes over altogether and Haig and June have opposite reactions. June bravely attempts to fight off the demon as it kills her with a crucifix and her faith, while Haig pledges his devotion to the demon and promises to serve Satan.
• Oh, Crap!: Haig's reaction to the demon snapping Gus' neck followed by strangling June so hard her necklace slits her throat open? A very appropriately timed "OH FUCK".
• Only One Name: Christou. Discussed, too, by Jack, who notes that it makes him sound creepier.
• Only Sane Man: Gus, Jack's put-upon assistant/co-star, is the first to really twig that things are getting out of hand and begins demanding that the show be stopped before anyone gets hurt. Jack and Leo dismiss it as him being superstitious and jumpy, but he's proven more and more right as the night proceeds.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-Universe. Christou spends the first stretch of the show talking in a very exaggerated and stereotypical Hispanic accent, but when he experiences an actuall psychic event, that accent either wavers or disappears entirely, particularly when he's freaked out or worked up, clearly indicating that it's something he puts on for his image.
• Painting the Medium: After most of the film is done as a very realistic recreation of 70s-era production values, Jack's vision inflicted on him by the demon is suddenly and jarringly represented in modern, HD film-making that would be impossible to make in the time period the film is set.
• Period Piece: Set in the late 1970s and works a lot of pop cultural milestones of the decade into the plot, such as the nascent Satanic Panic, The Vietnam War, and the Darker and Edgier Hollywood landscape of the time.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite making fun of Gus, Jack is clearly deeply upset by Gus's death, and responds by calling his name in shock and sadness.
  • After being kind of a sleazeball for most of the film, when everything goes insane in the climax, Leo goes out of his way to try and rescue a horror-struck Jack instead of just fleeing with everyone else.
• Poke in the Third Eye: It's implied Christou's death is caused by him accidentally making psychic contact with the demon, with the resulting Brown Note doing something very destructive to his squishy human body.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Leo at one point casually refers to poor Gus as a "mick", an offensive and outdated word for Irish people, much to the latter's barely concealed fury.
• Ratings Stunt: The main reason that Night Owls is hosting Lilly and June is a bid to improve their ratings, which are lagging behind The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
• Real Time: The footage of the special and the back-stage happenings is shown in real time, the entire runtime of a late night talk show airing live.
• Recycled In Space: The movie bears a lot of similarities to Ghostwatch, a British TV special from the 1990s. They are both a Real Time chat show host (played by real-life UK host, Michael Parkinson, in the British version) who is running a Halloween Special focusing on a case of pubescent girl being tormented by a demon that turns all too real near the end ultimately possessing the host and getting multiple people killed. The difference is that the spirit in Ghostwatch may not be the Devil - he goes by the name Mr Pipes, but has a Multiple-Choice Past - whereas in this version, it is, and Jack has made a purposeful deal with him.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Jack has them try to play back part of one of Lilly's possessions due to thinking he noticed something. Madeline's ghost stood with him and the rest of the guests.
• Ritual Magic: Something the Abraxas cult deals in. As does the Bohemian Grove.
• Satanic Panic: Forms a major part of the backdrop of the film; Jack brings Lilly and June on as a Ratings Stunt banking off the emerging Panic, and the Abraxas cult takes a lot of cues from urban legends of the time, as does the Bohemian Grove .
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once everything starts literally going to hell in the climax, most of the studio audience and staff quite sensibly get the fuck out of dodge. A few far-sighted crew members leave even earlier, as Jack's producer mentions they walked out after Lilly's initial possession.
• Shout-Out: Haig mentions his recent debunkings during his intro, specifically visiting a familliar looking house in Amityville, New York. He also mentions he reached out to Ed and Loraine Warren, who declined to appear on Night Owls.
• Show Within a Show: The film takes the form of an episode of the fictionalized late night variety talk show "Night Owls with Jack Delroy".
• Sole Survivor: Lilly — the young teenage girl interviewed on the show — is the sole survivor of a Satanic cult’s mass suicide. However, at the end of the 'episode', Jack is the only survivor.
• Something Only They Would Say: Christou uses this as proof that he's contacted various spirits of the deceased. At one point he says he's being urgently contacted by a spirit called Minnie, who is revealed to be a private pet name Jack had for his wife.
• Spiking the Camera: invoked Lilly keeps staring intently into the camera when she first arrives on set. Jack has to gently tell her that she should look at the people who are talking to her.
• Stylistic Suck: The Found Footage is meant to resemble a real VHS recording from a 70s broadcast. Therefore it has the same color palettes, lighting, and technical glitches that such an old tape might have, as well as some very faithful replication of the vibe of a cheesy late night talk show with bad production; visible boom microphones when the camera zooms out, the host very obviously looking down at his mark when taking the stage for the first time, awkward jokes, hostility among guests, sensationalistic reporting, and much more. That is all until the host's mental breakdown, which is in glorious HD and filmed like an actual movie with proper production values.
• Tempting Fate: At one point, Gus asks Haig if he is going to make his head spin. Gus eventually dies when the demonic entity possessing Lilly causes his head to turn 180 degrees.
• That Was Not a Dream: The Halloween special ends with Jack, surrounded by corpses and fresh off being unmistakably faced with a real demon, desperately trying to convince himself he's in another trance as police close in on the studio.
• Theremin: Gus plays a theremin in the first skit of the night and he and Jack talk about it. One of the first really weird things to happen is it going inexplicably haywire and blaring out a loud shrieking noise while shocking Gus when tries to make it stop, forcing Haig to unplug the damn thing to get it to shut up.
• Unexpectedly Real Magic: Christou is just as shocked as everyone else when his psychic demonstration actually yields results. Likewise, Haig is shocked and disturbed when his attempt at demonstrating how a seemingly supernatural event could be faked through suggestion and stagecraft works a little too well, though he tries (badly) to pretend that he isn't.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: All Jack and Leo want is to get the show back to it's former popularity, and Jack in particular indicates that he wasn't expecting the "deal" he made with the demon in the Grove to be for real. Unfortunately, things go very wrong.
• Voice of the Legion: Lilly speaks in this voice after she's possessed.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: After inadvertently contacting Mr. Wriggles, Christou ends up projectile vomiting Bad Black Barf all over the stage and live on camera, much to the understandable horror of Jack, who demands the crew cut to commercial.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: After Mr. Wriggles kills Gus, Carmicheal and June, everyone, Jack included, evacuates the studio, for it to cut to static, followed by a Technical Difficulties card. When it comes back, it seems like the show has started again, with Gus introducing Jack... That is until the Frame Break into HD widescreen... then the Technical Difficulties card literally melts, and it's clear Nothing Is The Same Any More...
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jack is subjected to this repeatedly, as after Madeline's death, his return to Night Owls is full of shock-value TV in an attempt at ratings, such as having a hippie and an active-duty service member fight. One guest even calls Jack out on this, saying he used to be cool.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Carmichael Haig is a flamboyant showman and professional skeptic who gets increasingly fed up with his fellow guests; he sees self-professed psychics and their ilk as predatory phonies preying on the credulous and vulnerable. When it comes to Christou, whose claims to relay comforting messages from a man who died from suicide to his grieving family are totally bogus, Haig is correct, and he endeavors to illustrate one way a sufficiently charismatic fraud might be able to work a room through suggestion and hypnosis. Unfortunately, he's in a horror movie, and the latter goes really wrong, really fast.
• You Are What You Hate: For all that Haig rails against people like Christou who fake the supernatural for profit, it's abundantly clear that he's just as guilty of preying off vulnerable people, exploiting tragedy for his own ends, and generally being a sleazy prick as the latter. He just uses skepticism to do it instead of magic.

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"They told you you could have it all, didn't they?"

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