‘Late Night with the Devil’ Review — A great concept possessed by an aesthetic demon: AI

A review of the new horror film, in theaters now and on Shudder 4/19

Over the past couple of days, new horror film Late Night with the Devil has gone viral on Film Twitter for all the wrong reasons. A mutual of mine who goes by @neverthetories saw the movie in theaters and noticed something that a lot of people seem to have missed: interstitial graphics throughout the movie were clearly made by AI. “Indie horror debuting AI before any major studio release is… just so incredibly shit,” he wrote, and his Letterboxd review calling out the film’s use of AI quickly became the most popular on the app.

The trailer screencap that went viral shows an illustration of a dancing skeleton. He’s surrounded by pumpkins that seem to be square, the bones on his hand are mangled, and he appears to be wearing a boot. As the backlash grew online, Variety reached out to Cameron and Colin Cairnes, the directors of the film. “We experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film,” they said in a statement.