There are lots of new releases out there that are getting everyone talking. Instead of just covering one of them...why not explore all three? Ahead, we'll take a look at Late Night with the Devil, Exhuma, and Road House, three of the most buzzed-about new releases of March 2024.
Late Night with the Devil
Sometimes, a horror movie is just a lot of fun to watch. So it is with Late Night with the Devil, which ponders the question of what would happen if a 1970s talk show and The Exorcist collided. Here, the talk show host is Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), the host of Night Owls with Jack Delroy. The movie chronicles him on Halloween night 1977 trying to boost his ratings by featuring a pair of special guests: Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her patient, supposedly possessed child Lilly (Ingrid Torelli). Writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes opt to frame this story primarily as if it's found footage of this episode when it was "recorded live." Heavy swear words get censored with bleeps. All the "live footage" is framed in a 4:3 aspect ratio by cinematographer Matthew Temple (brief monochromatic cutaways to Delroy off the set are filmed in more standard framing). The costumes look perfectly 1970s.
Late Night with the Devil is a riot just in terms of how well it evokes a specific era of television history. Brief glimpses of Hee Haw style sketches, the banter between Delroy and sidekick Gus (Rhys Auteri) cribbed from every late night talk show, even the wide array of guests hosted on this show evokes the groundbreaking talk show Soul! These influences coalesce to create a deeply lived-in world for the Late Night with the Devil characters to inhabit. They're not just existing in a pastiche of 1970s television...they are in 1970s television! That immersion into the past just makes it all the more exciting to watch the spooky slowly but surely creep into Night Owls with Jack Delroy.
Writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes demonstrate a great sense of pacing in how they balance realistic 1970s television with heightened paranormal frights. They've also made a great call in getting David Dastmalchian to anchor the movie as Delroy. For years, Dastmalchian's been a reliably excellent character actor. Inhabiting a lead role is something he pulls off with similarly superb results. He's just so good at playing a believable showman, Delroy comes off as somebody who totally could've been a staple of 1970s television. At the same time, Dastmalchian proves highly skilled at subtly offering up glimpses of something more vulnerable, calculating, and human within Delroy. This man can be downright despicable, but he also makes sure you see the tangible psychology behind his actors. It's a terrific lead performance that only gets more entrancing in the exceptionally disorienting climax to Late Night with the Devil. This is a remarkably entertaining horror film with a dynamite lead performance...what a shame it had to go and use A.I. art for some on-air bumpers.
Exhuma
One of the biggest global box office successes of 2024 so far is Exhuma, the new horror film from director Jang Jae-hyun. Hailing from Korea, the production concerns shaman Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) being hired to help rid a baby of a generational curse What should be a simple assignment turns into something much deadlier and more sinister once the excavation of an important grave is conducted. During this process, an ancient evil is unleashed into the world! Hwa-rim now must work alongside the likes of feng shui expert Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) to ward off a paranormal entity as bloodthirsty as he is malicious!
The biggest problem with Exhuma is that its visuals are somewhat rote. Some of the best horror movies thrive on very precise images that demonstrate as much craft for staging and blocking as they do for conjuring up frights. Unfortunately, Jae-hyun and cinematographer Lee Mo-gae opt to realize Exhuma in very standard ways. If you've seen an Insidious or Conjuring movie, then you know how Exhuma will frame ghosts that suddenly show up in previously vacant backdrops! At the same time, Jae-hyun does keep the plot moving across its 130-minute runtime. That's no small feat for a horror film, a genre usually best served by sub-90 minute runtimes. Plus, his screenplay eventually finds a very interesting historical grounding for the terrifying ghost. Best of all, a rock-solid cast commits to this material in an engaging fashion. Even when the dialogue or plot points are generic, Kim Go-eun and Choi Min-sik lend weight to the proceedings. Exhuma isn't anything tremendously special, but it's elevated above certain other supernatural horror films simply by the presence of such notable performers.
Road House
I can handle a lot of flaws in a movie. Generic needle drops. Clumsy dialogue. Ham-fisted narrative turns. What I cannot stand are egregious visual flaws that make a feature downright unpleasant to look at. It's one thing to make an artsy film with intentionally abrasive imagery...but why must an escapist action movie make me recoil at shots of characters walking to their car? So it is with the remake of Road House from director Doug Liman. For some reason, this modern take on the saga of Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) opts to douse nighttime exterior shots surrounding the titular location in urine-yellow color grading. No matter the mood or activity outside, scenes set around the Road House are doused in this repulsive color. A slightly more bearable but no less intrusive blue tint dominates interior shots of this locale.
Liman's overuse of bad color grading already drags down Road House. The fact that he executes fight scenes with terrible camerawork just cements the movie as a visual nightmare. God only knows why every skirmish had to be captured with a digital camera that won't stop moving, disorienting editing, and even the occasional inexplicable fish-eye lens. Were these techniques just used to mask when a stunt performer stepped in for actors like Gyllenhaal and Post Malone? Who knows, but these methods render the fights in Road House a chore to sit through. Similarly bad is how screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry overload this remake with too much backstory for everyone. Props to the duo for conjuring up a story that isn't just a beat-for-beat retread of the original movie at least. But did this new Road House have to be such a slog that's toxically obsessed with lore? On top of all that, audiences also have to sit through Conor McGregor (playing one of the big baddies here) trying to pretend he's an actor. I'd rather get punched by McGregor than see another minute of him attempting to mimic the energy of a wacky John Wick baddie.
I suppose "pain don't hurt", but watching this new Road House is a painful experience. Let's all join hands and pray Jake Gyllenhaal someday wants to be in real movies again.
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