I thought this was a decent movie that had the potential to be great. Sadly, it substituted OTT melodrama for slow burn creepiness. As with some others, I'm not sure I cared for the turn it took in the third act. As an attempt at a mindscrew, it fell a bit short. Are we to presume that the mindscrew as experienced by Delroy (the corrupted flashbacks to his previous show highlights throughout the years, etc.) was also captured on video and is being experienced by the in-universe viewers of this newly unearthed footage? Seems a bit silly imo.
The finale's shift in tone to Evil Dead-esque comedy, like the guests attempting to protect themselves with their own respective religious symbols and with the skeptic finally offering up his own object of worship, i.e., money, to the demon was also pretty abrupt and bizarre. The sidekick chanting 'the power of christ compels you', though fittingly cliche and superficial a thing for a showbiz personality to say in the face of demonic possession, felt blatantly parodic.
And maybe I don't have as much right to say this, given that I didn't actually grow up in the seventies, but I don't think the movie did nearly as good a job at capturing the feel of that era as some are claiming. It didn't feel grimy, homely or paradoxically schmaltzy enough to feel like genuine '70s entertainment. On paper it sounds easy enough to capture the zeitgeist of a turbulent time like the 1970s, but in practice I don't think it quite pulled it off.
Maybe I'm sounding a little overly harsh on it, but I did genuinely enjoy the movie. I thought the highlghts were actually the performances from the main cast, especially Dastmalchian as Delroy, and Ian Bliss as the skeptic. As a fan of both horror and vintage late night talk shows, it was a great deal of fun.
Hunter RiderRonin
‘Press Your Luck’ Paul Walter Hauser, Walton Goggins, Maisie Williams (2 Viewers)
