First Things First…
This came and went in theaters quickly, which bummed me out because I didn’t get to it. It got strong reviews, looks creepy, and David Dastmalchian has been on a roll. He also looks like he’s not above unleashing evil in living rooms nationwide.
6 Things I Like
6. The Voice of Reason
“You are not a bad man, Jack. You’re not. And I am begging you to stop this before something terrible happens.”
Gus McConnell
With Jack and his producer, Leo, hellbent on popping a rating during Sweeps Week to save their show, they’ll go to any lengths. They’ll even summon a demon to the surface of a 13-year-old girl’s psyche—consequences be damned.
It’s crucial, then, to have a voice of reason who will speak up when they go too far.
That job falls to Gus, Jacks’ long-suffering sidekick.
While everyone else has their own agenda—Christou to sell his performance, Carmichael to debunk all phenomena he sees, June to sell her book (and then to protect Lilly)—Gus just wants to do his job. But when he sees their show devolving into dark shit, like demonic possession, it’s too much for him. And it’s Gus reminding Jack that he’s a good man that makes Jack easier to keep rooting for, even as he sacrifices his own integrity and morals for the show.
The flipside, though, which makes Gus even more interesting, is that he doesn’t have the backbone to go with his moral decency. He doesn’t walk out, like a few unseen crew members do during a commercial break. He can’t even refuse to do the hypnosis bit with Carmichael. Jack literally tells him, “Do as you’re told, Gus,” when Car volunteers him, and Gus obeys.
I was shocked to find that this is only the second acting credit for Rhys Auteri, who plays Gus, and the first for a feature length film. It’s a great performance in a movie filled with them.
5. Jack’s Unintended Sacrifice
“They told you you could have it all. Didn’t they? Be number one? Well, you finally made it, darling. But you had to pay a price. Exit Minnie, stage left.”
Madeleine Piper
There are clues about the darkness in Jack’s past. We hear about his involvement with a secret society that performs arcane rituals in the woods. We also learn that his wife, Madeleine, mysteriously died of lung cancer despite never smoking.
There’s no reason to try to connect the two, until we meet Lilly. She’s possessed by the demon Abraxas (or a minion of his), and apparently Abraxas is connected to Jack’s secret society.
Turns out Jack played with fire. He meddled with forces he didn’t understand and made the proverbial deal with the devil to achieve as much fame and success as he did. He just didn’t know he’d pay the price with his wife’s life.
Jack’s sacrifice is even more poignant because of the unusually intimate relationship he and his wife shared. We’re told…
“By Jack’s side through everything is his wife, the beloved stage actress Madeleine Piper. Despite Jack’s relentless quest to be number one, they are considered one of showbiz’s happiest and most enduring couples. Madeleine is his muse and his confidante…”
Also, Jack only reaches number one on his final night on the air.
All of it is a bold statement about the dangers of unchecked ambition, and the insane lengths some people will go to in their pursuit of success and stardom.
4. 70’s Aesthetic
The 70’s were before my time, and I don’t have any particular fascination with them. But I love the look and vibe of the whole movie.
The outfits, the microphones, the Night Owls graphics and theme music, the studio setup, even the importance of late-night talk shows in the public’s consciousness, transport you to a very specific time and place, when talk show hosts were kings of Hollywood and mainstays in American living rooms.
3. Night Owls Challenges Carson
“With an Emmy nomination to his name and growing audience share, Jack’s sights are set on the coveted late-night crown.”
TV Narrator
The opening few minutes of the film give plenty of context for how something so catastrophic could happen on live TV.
We learn all about Jack rising from humble beginnings in radio to landing the gig as the host of Night Owls. I love watching its growth, and how he pushed and pushed to compete with Johnny Carson. The show grew, as did his fame. He even became a fixture on late-night TV.
But Jack eventually developed a reputation as an also-ran. He got nominated for awards but never won, and he couldn’t unseat Carson in the ratings.
Even when Madeleine appeared on his show while battling cancer, just two weeks before her death, they hit their all-time ratings peak—and still lost to Carson by a point.
Not only is all that background fun, but it also gives insight into Jack as a person. He’s a good man, but his ambition makes him increasingly desperate.
It shows why he returned to his hosting duties after just a one-month sabbatical to grieve Madeleine’s death. And why the show doubled down on controversy, as their downward slide in the ratings accelerated.
Having this context from the outset makes it feel much more realistic that Jack would continue with the stunt with Lilly—even after Christou got violently ill on TV and died in an ambulance on his way to the hospital, even after June told him Lilly would be in danger, and even after they witnessed the horrible emergence of Mr. Wriggles.
2. Lilly Shines
There have been some outstanding performances in horror movies recently from younger actresses—Megan, Abigail, and now Lilly (though I’m glad they didn’t name the movie after her).
But unlike the others, who are more endearing at first, Lilly is off-putting from the start. She almost immediately starts talking to Jack about his dead wife. And she constantly needs reminding that she doesn’t have to look directly at the cameras. Everything about her is awkward.
But then you get a look at the house she was rescued from, and the sinister things that were happening there, and you can’t help but feel bad for her. I mean, they were breeding children for human sacrifice.
That combination of sympathy and disgust make Lilly the perfect person for this performance. You have to think the audience watching the show knew what they were doing was wrong, yet they couldn’t look away. Lilly does an amazing job selling that.
And then when Mr. Wriggles emerges, the way she looks and the demonic voice she puts on are incredible.
Kudos to Ingrid Torelli, who plays Lilly. She’s new to me, but she looks like she could have a very bright future.
1. What’s Real and What’s Not?
“You, sir, like me, are a liar, a cheat, a charlatan, and a fake. The difference being, I’m honest about it.”
Carmichael Haig
I always felt a little confused whether what I was watching was real or a show. Some of those things get cleared up, but some don’t.
Like, I’m still not sure if Christou was a charlatan. Did he really have information about the two ladies in the front row so he could target them? And even if he did, was the contact from Jack’s wife still real?
On the other hand, I had no idea at first if Carmichael’s hypnosis session with Gus was real. I didn’t understand how they could show Gus ripping his own stomach open, with worms and entrails falling out everywhere. Car adds to that confusion by pretending the whole thing has gone awry and acting like he can’t bring Gus out of his trance—until, finally, he does quite easily.
That is my favorite scene in the movie. And they later show that Car hypnotized the entire audience, and the playback of the footage shows what really happened, which isn’t how they remember it.
All this blurs the line between reality and show. It leaves you in a constant state of wondering if what you’re watching is real. It’s why Carmichael plays such an important role as the skeptic, especially because he himself is capable of great deception.
Even the end of the movie seems ambiguous for a minute, when you don’t know if Lilly—or Mr. Wriggles—really just killed Car, June, and Gus.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. The Grove and the First Church of Abraxas
“The Grove has long portrayed itself as a harmless summer camp for the rich and powerful. But speculation swirls around its taste for arcane ceremony and its power to make and break careers.”
TV Narrator
There’s a cult and a secret society… and I would’ve liked a little more about both.
They plant the seed about The Grove early in the movie, but we don’t learn much about it. It’s just kind of a weird thing Jack is part of. Only later do we find out he presumably did some kind of ritual to gain fame and success, and it cost him his wife.
When they first talk about The Grove, they show grainy, black-and-white footage of people in white robes and weird bird-like masks, howling and trilling while one person drinks from a chalice while on his knees, all in the middle of the redwoods. I wanted more of this.
Then there’s the First Church of Abraxas, led by the enigmatic Szandor D’Abo. They had Lilly.
What’s most upsetting about this cult is that they put kids in harm’s way. And their home base is a house in a suburban neighborhood, on a residential street, but it’s filled with skulls, daggers, candles, pentagrams, and other devilish iconography.
Their leader is creepy as hell and says things like…
“Abraxas shows us there is no good, no evil, no redemption. Only what we desire and how we obtain it.”
I wish we could’ve gotten more from him and his cult, too.
2 Things I Don’t Like
2. No-Selling Christou’s Death
Carmichael’s skepticism is critical to the story, as I talked about. But I thought it would’ve made sense to at least see his conviction get a little shaken when he finds out Christou died.
Even if he believes Christou is a fraud… that Christou had information about the ladies he “connects” with their dead relative… and that even Christou vomiting blood was just a parlor trick called “spouting,” or “controlled regurgitation” …
Finding out that he vomited himself to death in the ambulance should’ve given him at least a moment’s pause that something is wrong.
1. Cheesy VFX
Maybe the effects are meant to look cheesy to match the 70’s aesthetic. And I actually enjoy them in the scene when Carmichael hypnotizes Gus, and we see the worms. But the rest don’t work for me.
Christou’s “spouting” looks silly, and I thought that was bad enough.
But there’s also a trick with how Lilly looks like she’s conducting electricity when she’s possessed. That comes to a head at the end, as she’s killing Carmichael, June, and Gus. She crackles as her head splits open, and she becomes translucent.
Even if it’s an intentional choice, it looks too silly for me to take seriously, and certainly too silly to be scared by.
Tim Matassa
