Comrade Courant Culture Critic

Late Night with the Devil (2023): A Fun, if Flawed Séance in the Studio “Do not adjust your set.” — And don’t expect perfection, but do expect a wildly entertaining Halloween night. — 3.5/5 Stars I’ve been hearing about Late Night with the Devil since it dropped—a buzzed-about “instant cult classic” that fused analog horror, found footage, and 1970s late-night TV into something supposedly groundbreaking. As someone who followed ARGs like The Mikaeli ARG (yes, the “hitting metal 17 times” guy— In my opinion a defining voice of modern analog horror, whose project concluded just last year), I went in hoping for a feature-length version of that same immersive, broadcast-based dread. What I got was something far more modest—but still very fun. This isn’t a masterpiece. It’s not even terrifying. But it is a wildly entertaining, impeccably styled Halloween movie that absolutely earns a spot in your annual rotation....

Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023): A Lovecraftian Missed Opportunity Wrapped in Decent Animation "A cursed prophecy, a bat-shaped god, and a film that should’ve been far more terrifying." — 3/5 Stars Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023) arrives with a tantalizing premise: a 1920s Batman, cosmic horror, and a Gotham City built on occult bloodlines. Based on the cult-favorite Elseworlds comic of the same name, the film leans hard into H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos—specifically echoing The Doom That Came to Sarnath —and reimagines Bruce Wayne not as a detective, but as a reluctant avatar of primordial dread. It’s certainly better than most straight-to-video animated superhero fare —more ambitious in scope, more atmospheric in tone. But let’s be clear: it doesn’t hold a candle to DC’s animated high-water marks like Batman: Under the Red Hood , The Killing Joke , or Gotham by Gaslight...