Late Night with the Devil is a cleverly presented tale with a decently convincing 1970s TV look and a great performance from the ever-charming David Dastmalchian. This much is true. Alas, many critics will be hesitant to praise it.
It's likely you've already heard of this film through its AI controversy, being the first major motion picture - to my knowledge - to use so-called AI art. (It's actually "machine learning", I know, but I think we're past trying to hold on to what Artificial Intelligence "actually" refers to.) It's certainly the first one to garner this much attention for it.
To make matters more disappointing, this "major" example wasn't from a "major" studio (we might expect this sort of get-out-of-hiring-artists cheat from Disney, and we'd be right; remember the intro to Secret Invasion). Instead, it comes from the world of indie horror: a nifty found-footage joint presenting itself as recovered footage from the 1970s talk/variety show Night Owls with Jack Delroy, and the interstitials created for the in-universe show features clearly AI-generated cartoon skeletons, with all the effed up fingers and weird uneven eyes that this entails.
You may wonder why everyone is more upset by this than AI being used more and more in larger Hollywood projects (a question raised by Brendan Hodges and others, once again referring to Secret Invasion plus the various AI-voiced Skywalkers we've seen lately). Why beat up on the little guy?
Well, that's just it. The word "indie" is all but synonymous with the little guy - creators who don't get the same money or attention as the titans of Hollywood. And so, for many people, it is disheartening to see an indie production be part of the problem; to do something that spits in the face of aspiring artists, by (A) relying on prompts over hiring actual persons and (B) using software that's trained on such persons' pre-existing images without their approval. Once again, there is much to appreciate about the production and there is clearly love behind it. So why did this happen?
One defense I've seen is that the artworks in question were made back when AI art was just something people toyed around with, instead of being recognized as a real threat to aspiring creatives like it is today. (The production even predates the SAG-AFTRA strikes.) Thus - I guess - we oughtn't be too harsh on the filmmakers.
However, artist Summer Ray quickly demonstrated why there's no justification for sticking to the AI route; in just a few hours, she whipped up a hand-drawn version of the graphic that looks more era-accurate, more like an actual skeleton, and just all-around better than the AI mess (remember, this was 2022-era software), all while being an ORIGINAL piece that makes no nonconsensual use of prior works/assets. If you can't afford a drawing, you can always just, ya know, not have a drawing in your film. Hell, the version screened at SXSW reportedly didn't have the artwork.
Because of this, many people are straight up suggesting we're morally justified to pirate the film, because the filmmakers' terms are such that theft is permissible. While that may not be entirely fair to all those who did put in work to make this movie, others would deem that we should've been even more vocal - just a few weeks later, we learned of A24's algorithmically generated Civil War posters and that Netflix murder documentary that used AI to, I kid you not, create childhood photos of the subject.
All of this aside, I think Late Night with the Devil is a witty and well-executed picture. It is skillfully both hilarious and unsettling, with entertaining and mostly convincing performances throughout. Do what you will with this information.
It's likely you've already heard of this film through its AI controversy, being the first major motion picture - to my knowledge - to use so-called AI art. (It's actually "machine learning", I know, but I think we're past trying to hold on to what Artificial Intelligence "actually" refers to.) It's certainly the first one to garner this much attention for it.
To make matters more disappointing, this "major" example wasn't from a "major" studio (we might expect this sort of get-out-of-hiring-artists cheat from Disney, and we'd be right; remember the intro to Secret Invasion). Instead, it comes from the world of indie horror: a nifty found-footage joint presenting itself as recovered footage from the 1970s talk/variety show Night Owls with Jack Delroy, and the interstitials created for the in-universe show features clearly AI-generated cartoon skeletons, with all the effed up fingers and weird uneven eyes that this entails.
You may wonder why everyone is more upset by this than AI being used more and more in larger Hollywood projects (a question raised by Brendan Hodges and others, once again referring to Secret Invasion plus the various AI-voiced Skywalkers we've seen lately). Why beat up on the little guy?
Well, that's just it. The word "indie" is all but synonymous with the little guy - creators who don't get the same money or attention as the titans of Hollywood. And so, for many people, it is disheartening to see an indie production be part of the problem; to do something that spits in the face of aspiring artists, by (A) relying on prompts over hiring actual persons and (B) using software that's trained on such persons' pre-existing images without their approval. Once again, there is much to appreciate about the production and there is clearly love behind it. So why did this happen?
One defense I've seen is that the artworks in question were made back when AI art was just something people toyed around with, instead of being recognized as a real threat to aspiring creatives like it is today. (The production even predates the SAG-AFTRA strikes.) Thus - I guess - we oughtn't be too harsh on the filmmakers.
However, artist Summer Ray quickly demonstrated why there's no justification for sticking to the AI route; in just a few hours, she whipped up a hand-drawn version of the graphic that looks more era-accurate, more like an actual skeleton, and just all-around better than the AI mess (remember, this was 2022-era software), all while being an ORIGINAL piece that makes no nonconsensual use of prior works/assets. If you can't afford a drawing, you can always just, ya know, not have a drawing in your film. Hell, the version screened at SXSW reportedly didn't have the artwork.
Because of this, many people are straight up suggesting we're morally justified to pirate the film, because the filmmakers' terms are such that theft is permissible. While that may not be entirely fair to all those who did put in work to make this movie, others would deem that we should've been even more vocal - just a few weeks later, we learned of A24's algorithmically generated Civil War posters and that Netflix murder documentary that used AI to, I kid you not, create childhood photos of the subject.
All of this aside, I think Late Night with the Devil is a witty and well-executed picture. It is skillfully both hilarious and unsettling, with entertaining and mostly convincing performances throughout. Do what you will with this information.