The hottest horror film during this period is undoubtedly the Korean movie "Broken Tomb" starring Choi Min-sik and Kim Go-eun, but its popularity is not proportional to the scare value, and the reputation has declined.
In contrast, another somewhat unpopular American horror film "The Devil's Late Show" is highly regarded by fans because of its excellent quality.
"The Devil's Late Show"
With an IMDb score of 7.1 and a freshness of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, it is a lot of highlights for a small-budget horror film.
Especially because of the tonality of the pseudo-documentary style of this film, as well as the mix and match elements such as reality show, cult, ghost body and exorcism, it is quite worth watching!
TV weird talk in the seventies
Unlike most horror films, "The Devil's Late Show" does not get to the point at the beginning, but uses a seven-minute opening to explain the background of the American 70s and the overview of the TV station, especially the life of the actor Jack Deloy.
Here, intimate photographs, home videos, and media materials enhance Jack's character in a way that is authentically corroborated. To put it simply, all this is just to convince us that Jack is a real person.
From this point of view, "The Devil's Late Night Show" is a bit of a shadow of "Citizen Kane", using all audio-visual means to turn fiction into reality. In the early seventies, Jack Deloy rose to fame and became a household name with a late-night show called Night Owl.
However, the ratings of "Night Owl" have never reached the first place, and they have become the second in the 10,000-year companion. Not only that, but there is a grapevine that Jack has a close relationship with a mysterious organization called "Jungle Park", which also tarnishes his image. Coupled with the sudden lung cancer of his wife Madeleine and her eventual death, all this put him at a low point.
In order to save his career, Jack planned to invite a few strange people related to supernatural events on Halloween night in 1977 to use swords to attract the audience. The feature part of the movie is the so-called TV master tape of the year, and the behind-the-scenes footage that has never been released.
In the feature film, Jack invited a total of three groups of guests: an Indian psychic, a well-known magician, and a psychologist and the special girl he treated. When the Indian psychic came to power, although he also showed his ability to communicate with the undead, his more routine way was not eye-catching.
What really disturbed people was that after his performance, he vomited a lot of black water and died mysteriously when he was pulled back to the hospital by an ambulance.
This sense of unease deepened as psychologists and special girls came to power. The girl is special because she is found at the scene of a cultist self-immolation, and after being summoned by a psychologist, the demon will manifest through the girl's body.
The climax of the whole movie is when we and the audience think it's just a show, and the horror gets out of control.
The age when fear was born
The reason why "The Devil's Late Night Show" can make horror movie fans climax in their craniophs is that it is well versed in the horror atmosphere of the 70s in the United States, and spreads the real cult events to the depths of the hearts of fans through the form of pseudo-documentaries.
Many horror movie fans know Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby", which is a classic not only because of the excellence of the film itself, but also because of the bloody massacre it caused.
In 1969, a horrific murder occurred at Polanski's home. At that time, Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, who was pregnant with Liujia, and three others were brutally slaughtered by a gang led by cult leader Charles Manson.
This incident caused panic in the entire Hollywood people, and became a sensational cult murder case in the early 70s. It is not difficult to understand why at the beginning of "The Devil's Late Show", a video of Charles Manson being arrested by the police was used.
And in the subsequent plot, whether it is the rumors of the male protagonist Jack and the cult organization, or the rise and self-immolation of the cult "Abraxas", they all reflect the atmosphere of death in American society: everyone is worried about the invasion of cults, but cults are everywhere.
As a result, the reality show of the TV station has become a popular place for this kind of theme. The capital side and the host want to use such sensational topics to attract attention, and the public is eager to release their inner fears.
In the film, the difference in narrative perspective is expressed through the change of the scale of the picture and the difference in the color of the picture. For example, the retro TV picture is a public program, while the black and white wide screen is the communication between the people behind the scenes.
This not only makes the story of the movie clear and clear, but also enhances the real effect of horror events, and the retro painting style is no longer just a nostalgic feeling, but also a means for us to experience the cult events on the spot.
In addition to involving real history, the scary technique of "The Devil's Late Night Show" is no longer a vulgar "jump scare", using a startling ghost picture to make the audience uneasy, but replaced with a suspenseful foreshadowing with a sense of atmosphere, so that we are always in the studio scene. Whether it is the mysterious death of an Indian psychic after spitting black water shortly after the opening, or the terrifying effect produced by the girl after being possessed by a demon, in fact, it is not brilliant when you take it out.
But when you follow the perspective of the host Jack, you are oppressed by the performance of the ratings, and in doubt, you witness one supernatural event after another, and after the magician proves that all this is just a trick, you immediately witness the real hammer phenomenon of the ghost in the videotape.
This makes it difficult for us not to feel creepy by this kind of "real" image that pierces people's hearts.
Further, "The Devil's Late Show" stands out for its use of all means to immerse the audience in the horror of the event, rather than stimulating your physical response.
As a result, horror becomes a space from which there is no escape, and as long as we are in this story, we cannot break free from it like a nightmare.
Pseudo-documentaries and cults
Obviously, the success of "The Devil's Late Show" is another victory for pseudo-documentary horror films. This unique trend of horror films can be traced back to 1999's "Blair the Witch".
Before the film's release, it published various news reports about the missing people on its website, as well as their photos, and published missing person notices in offline magazines and video stores, which convinced many people to be true.
As a result, a cheap film with a DV in hand won $248 million at the global box office at a cost of $60,000, becoming the film with the highest return rate in film history. As a result, the horror effect is no longer the only indicator of horror films, and realism has begun to become the most important quality of this film.
In 2007, the American series "Smart: Ghost Record" and Spain's "Death Video" also set off a craze in the horror film scene, and many more films were made in the following years.
In the past decade, the more well-known pseudo-documentary horror films include Ma Kai's "The Evil Spirit" in the mainland, "Kunchi Rock" in South Korea, and "Curse" in Taiwan, China, which has aroused heated discussions in the past two years. With the help of DV recording, surveillance cameras, or other forms of "real shooting", the horror incident is brought to the real situation.
At the same time, the cult element is also not to be underestimated in horror films in recent years. In addition to the above-mentioned "Curse", Ali Esther, a celebrity under the A24 label, directed two films "Hereditary Doom" and "A Midsummer Night's Terror", as well as last year's "Sacrifice House for Rent" in Thailand, are typical cult horror films.
In addition to the two popular keywords of "The Devil's Late Night Show", which continues the pseudo-documentary style and cult theme, another place that cannot be ignored is actually the phenomenon of onlookers under the mass media.
In the movie, the reason why the host Jack still pleaded with the psychologist and the girl to possess the demon after noticing that something was wrong was to increase the ratings and return him to the peak of his career. And it wasn't just Jack who wanted to make this madness happen, but also the millions of viewers in front of the television, who used it as a spectacle and amusement on the one hand, and longed to see the most realistic, or real, demons on the other.
Similar to the theme, there are "Time to Purify" in 2019 and "Answer Me" in 2022. In these two movies, exorcism and ghost upper body have become the traffic passwords in the era of online live broadcasting, and they also reflect the emptiness and restlessness in the depths of the modern spirit.
An interesting phenomenon is that in "Purification Time", the demon finally manipulates all the onlookers through the webcast, and kills all over the world. And in "The Devil's Late Show", through the reality show, the demon finally came to the world, and the final subtitle showed: Attainment Arrival.
Indeed, what kind of horror effect does it have that makes the audience murmur in their hearts after watching the movie, "Isn't the devil really coming?" more penetrating?
Author: Fumi Minamino
Editor: Donnie Yen