Tag Archives: horror movies

Late Night With the Devil (2023) & Abigail (2024) with bonus mention of Mr. Magic (2023) & I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

I don’t think I could explain the never-ending life-chaos of the last year if I wanted to, but suffice to say my rudely interrupted Christmas Horror series is all polished up and in the queue…for December 2024.

I’ve abandoned any delusions of intricate multi-part thematic series posts in the near and, while I have so many complicated things cooking offline, am returning (temporarily) to the short review/reaction essay format of yore. Because a full site redesign is one of the many things in flux right now, I’m going to append trailers at the bottom of the post because they’re creating so much formatting chaos I’m starting to think I have a ghost in the machine.

I can tell you one thing for sure: horror film and literature has been an embarrassment of riches lately.

Two films I’ve been looking forward to popped up on subscription streaming services and/or VOD sooner than I expected. I am not complaining. Late Night With the Devil (2023) debuted on Shudder on April 19, the theatrical release date for Abigail (2024), although I didn’t actually see Abigail until this past weekend.

In Late Night With the Devil, Writers/Directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes present us with a found footage homage to Ghost Watch (1992), The Exorcist II (1977), 1970s late night TV talkshows, and the Satanic Panic which never entirely dissipates in the US. Purporting to be a reconstruction of a live 1977 Halloween broadcast intended to boost host Jack Delroy’s (David Dastmalchian) trailing ratings, the narrative integrates broadcast and behind-the-scenes documentary footage to show us the catastrophic consequences of Delroy’s hunger for success. Dastmalchian’s performance and the masterful mise en scène have, deservedly, garnered quite a lot of praise and attention. The rushed and slightly incoherent third act has also garnered a lot of attention, albeit minus the acclaim. Ditto the controversy regarding 3 AI generated interstitial images which appear during Delroy’s show.

(joke about the devil being in the details deleted in a rare display of self-control)

I’m less interested here in the messy bits here. Instead, I want to take a moment to praise Ingrid Torelli’s performance as Lilly. Torelli does a bang-up job channeling the 1970s vibe of the possessed child manifesting a demon under hypnosis, but what I found chilling were the moments when Lilly is a polite and composed child who stares down the camera lens, seeming to pierce the souls of the viewers tuning in to watch Delroy’s live spectacle. I found Lilly’s uncanny awareness of which camera is live both amusing and disquieting.

Found footage writers and filmmakers have long leveraged the rise of indie creators such as Youtubers, livestreamers, and podcasters to their advantage. Not having to contrive a journalistic backstory or mimic specific televisual elements can allow for greater freedom. Nevertheless, the medium of television remains a rich source, particularly for cosmic or supernatural horror.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) opens wide theatrically this week. While I likely won’t get a chance to see it until it arrives on streaming/VOD, I might occupy a little of that time with a reread of Kiersten White’s delightfully creepy 2023 novel, Mr. Magic.

Without spoilers, Mr. Magic is about a phenomenally popular 90s kids show that everyone remembers but of which no one can find footage. I’m continuously surprised that I still find it surprising how much work it still is to research television and how much once-wildly popular programming – even clips – simply isn’t anywhere to be found online. Reading Mr. Magic makes this feel vaguely sinister. I mean, you can certainly argue that it’s sinister the way we underfund archives and repositories and how little attention we pay to media conservation and preservation and how many impediments there are to digitizing and cataloging content, even without the complicated issues around posting anything corporately owned in a manner both legal and equitable.

But that’s depressing and not nearly as much fun as thinking about demons.

And speaking of demons. Abigail. Holy cats and kittens, this is a fun movie! As the trailer makes abundantly clear, the plot involves kidnappers (played by Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, William Catlett, Angus Cloud, and Kevin Durand) getting more than they bargained for when Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito) asks them to kidnap a young girl (Alisha Weir). Fans often complain about trailers with spoilers, but here Universal seems almost playful in the way they supply a trailer that basically dares you to go into the film believing you know too much. The film unspools its twists and wrinkles at a steady clip and the internal logic is pretty solid. Solid enough, at any rate.


Abigail (2024)


Late Night With the Devil (2023)


I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

The Underpass

Happy Halloween!

Hang on. I’m being told today isn’t actually the first day of Halloween, it’s the first day of October.

Husband is silly before he has coffee!

To kick off Halloween and/or October, director David Schmidt (Sword and Cloak Productions) has released a new short horror film.

The Underpass (2015)

Poster courtesy of Sword and Cloak Productions.

The sound mix is swell, so watch it with good headphones or speakers if you can!


The Underpass (2015)

Sword and Cloak have other shorts, clips, and trailers on their youtube page, so check them out!

I’m particularly fond of the faux trailer they produced for a contest last year.



House on Nightmare Lane (2014)

I suppose I should disclose that I’ve known David online for dog’s years and think he’s a peach. That doesn’t mean he’s not actually a talented filmmaker!

If they make it, I will watch

I enjoyed the Jaws reissue on DVD so much the other night that I felt compelled to watch the Jaws 2 reissue. I rented this one, I did not buy it. Let’s be clear – I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.

Jaws 2 was pretty awful. I knew it was bad going in, but I really didn’t remember it being this, well, awful.

There’s a fine line between bad and awful. But if you can transcend mere awfulness, you can reach the sublime state of Bad, which is more good than bad, really.

I believe I’ve explained all this to you before. My problem was that I had 4 mixed up with Jaws 3/3-D (the one at Sea World) which was was a bad/good interlude bordering on Bad before the franchise descended into bad/awful territory in Jaws 4D, wherein our hero pursues Brody’s widow and a drunk pilot played by Michael Caine to the ends of the earth.

You think the shark isn’t our hero? Oh baby, you haven’t seen all 4 of these in a row in a while have you? Yikes.

This took a deeper toll on me than the time we watched all of the Planet of the Apes movies – in their entirety – more than once over the course of one weekend. I thought I was made of stronger stuff but clearly I was mistaken. How do I know this? Because after I finished viewing Jaws 2 I got it into my head that watching a series of inferior sequels in one stretch was a good idea.

I not only watched Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, but I laughed. I didn’t laugh nearly as hard at Ace as I did at my next selection, the unintentionally hilarious Halloween 2.

I swear to you Donald Pleasance is method acting and has apparently been given the instruction to feel the pain of Cornelius in Escape from the Planet the Apes. He delivers a line and then shuffles off in this lurching way I can’t describe. Why does he walk that way? We never see his feet, maybe he’s wearing McDowell’s Ape-suit feet, necessitating the otherwise illogical loping/shuffling gait but still not explaining why he swings his arms that way. I simply don’t get it. Neither does Jamie Lee Curtis, which may be why her character spends the whole film hiding not only from her brother, but everyone else in the cast.

Do not try this at home, that’s all I have to say.