The acclaimed horror film puts an interesting spin on the found footage genre.

Late Night with the Devil has begun streaming on Shudder after originally being released in UK cinemas back in March.

Written and directed by brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes, the film stars David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, a 1970s late night talk show host, and has received acclaim from critics – despite reservations about the use of AI images during a few cutaway scenes.

At the outset, we are told that Delroy had recently lost his wife to lung cancer, and that he was a regular attendee of a Californian camp for the rich and powerful called The Grove – which appears to have a few cult-like properties.

Anyway, in a bid to compete with Johnny Carson, Delroy invites a demonically-possessed girl onto the Halloween special episode of his show.

Unsurprisingly, chaos ensues, building up to a frightening conclusion that may leave a few viewers a little perplexed – if that’s you, read on to have the Late Night with the Devil ending explained.

Late Night with the Devil ending explained: What happens to Jack Delroy?

Things first start to take a turn when one of Delroy’s guests, a psychic named Christou, performs a routine in which he claims to put audience members in touch with the dead.

Although his initial attempts are unsuccessful and he comes across as something of a hack, he suddenly appears to be spectacularly affected – and genuinely shaken – by what seems to be a real premonition to do with a person named Minnie.

During the commercial break, Christou insists that he has to leave as he is feeling unwell, but the show’s producer insists that he stays as the show is already experiencing a ratings boost due to the bizarre premonition.

After the break, Delroy welcomes his next guest, a former magician named Carmichael the Conjurer, who has now devoted his life to debunking what he believes to be the pseudoscience of occultism.

He instantly begins to criticise Christou and label him a charlatan, but Delroy sticks up for the psychic – claiming that the Minnie to whom he had referred was actually a pet name for his late wife Madeleine.

Then things get really weird. Suddenly, Christou begins to projectile vomit a mysterious black liquid and is rushed to hospital, and although Carmichael continues to claim this is all a hoax, it is clear that something very strange is going on.

This continues when Delroy brings out his next pair of guests: parapsychologist author June Ross-Mitchell and the subject of her new book, a girl named Lilly.

We are told that Lilly was the only person not to die during a mass suicide committed by a Satanic church that worshipped the demonic entity Abraxas, and that she has the ability to conjure him at will.

Carmichael is once again extremely sceptical, but June and Lilly agree to perform a conjuring to dissuaded his doubts. However, during the commercial break beforehand, Delroy is told something very disturbing: Christou has died en route to the hospital.

Obsessed with keeping the ratings up, Delroy ploughs on with the show anyway, despite advice to the contrary from his sidekick Gus, and the conjuring goes ahead.

While she is possessed, Lilly claims that June and Jack are having an affair, and also says something about having met Jack before “under the tall trees”.

Laura Gordon as June, Ingrid Torelli as Lilly, David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy and Ian Bliss as Carmichael in Late Night with the Devil. Shudder
The conjuring looks very convincing, but Carmichael is still extremely doubtful – and to prove it, carries out a hypnotism on his own, which involves grotesque worms exploding from Gus’s torso.

He then proves by rewinding the footage that the audience only thought they had seen this, and it had in fact been a hallucination, before he suggests that something similar had occurred during Lilly and June’s conjuring.

Only, when they rewind that footage, it appears exactly as it had during the conjuring. In fact, not only that, but Delroy also notices that an apparition of Madeline appeared directly behind him – which understandably causes him to panic.

As Delroy and Carmichael begin to argue – with the latter still believing the whole thing to be a hoax – Lilly suddenly becomes possessed again, far more violently this time. Her head splits open, and she telepathically kills Gus, June and Carmichael while Delroy desperately tries to exit.

But instead, he finds himself transported to a nightmare-like world, and is shown reliving moments from his past. It also becomes clear that the demon who possesses Lilly had previously encountered him at The Grove – where he had struck a deal with it to ensure the initial success of his chat show.

It was this deal which had resulted in his wife contracting cancer, making him responsible for his death.

Still in the nightmare world, Delroy is paid a visit by Madeleine’s spirit, who tells him to stab her so she can be put out of her pain and misery. Although initially hesitant, he agrees – only for the scene to suddenly shift back to the studio where we see that he has instead stabbed Lilly.

The film ends with Delroy surrounded by dead bodies, and the sounds of police sirens in the distance – suggesting that far from reviving his show, Delroy will be spending a long time behind bars.

Does Jack know that his fame will come at the cost of sacrificing Madeleine?

Talking to Variety, Late Night with the Devil star and executive producer Dastmalchian said “there’s no way Jack would have participated in that” if he’d known what would happen.

“It’s never overt,” he explained. “It’s a nudge on the shoulder, a whisper in the ear. If someone had come up to Jack with a contract that said, ‘For Night Owls to be number one, you’re going to have to kill Minnie,’ – there’s no way Jack would have participated in that.

“I’m sure there were times he got lost in the moment and said things you might not otherwise say – that you would sacrifice anything to get what you want.”