Throughout his career, David Dastmalchian has participated in horror projects such as “Boogeyman: Your Fear Is Real” and “The Last Voyage of the Demeter.” Through these and other characters, the Pennsylvania-born actor has come to the conclusion that horror is an incredible lens through which we can see the aspects of human beings that scare us the most.
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“Historically, going back to ancient times, and then through tradition, from Shakespeare to 21st century literature, the metaphors that great writers have used to represent scary things have been an incredible and therapeutic way of looking at what scares us,” says the protagonist of “De noche con el diablo” in an interview with El Sol de México.
The actor confessed that his worst fears lie in his mental health and the battles against addictions he has faced in the past. In fact, it was thanks to this that he connected more with his character in the independent film that hits theaters on August 1, and understood the decisions he made.
“He’s a man who doesn’t want to deal with the loss of his wife, he can’t process the fear that his career could be over. He’s so afraid that everything he loves and has worked for will be taken away from him, he even compromises his belief system and his ethics, because he’s just trying to hold on to something he believes in.”
She added: “I’ve felt this way before, it’s happened to a lot of people, I think we all share similar fears and anxieties, and sometimes these lead us to ignore our intuition in favour of listening to fear. In a horror film that’s wonderful, because it’s what drives a person into the basement where they shouldn’t go.”
The actor considers it a gift to receive an original script that leaves him with the feeling of being something different from any story he has read before, especially when it involves a character that completely takes him out of the profile he had played.
“I’m proud of the body of work I’ve been able to do, on films like Dune or The Suicide Squad, or on award-winning independent films, like when I worked with Michel Franco on Chronicle: The Last Patient. It’s incredible that they considered me to play a talk show host, it’s something different than what I normally do,” he shared.
In “Night Owls with the Devil,” you step into the shoes of “Jack Delroy,” host of the late-night talk show “Night Owls with Jack Delroy.” The story follows the events that unfolded on a Halloween night in the 1970s, months after the death of the host’s wife.
In that broadcast, she welcomed a medium and a possessed girl as guests, and although at first the events seem false, the audience will soon discover that they are facing a demonic threat.
This story, directed and written by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes, was presented at festivals such as Sitges and South by Southwest, and was even praised by writer Stephen King, who described it as “absolutely brilliant”: “I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I invite you to watch it as soon as you can,” wrote the author of “It” on his X account last March.
HUMANS VS AI
To create the bumpers that appear during the commercial breaks of the fictional show, the team made use of Artificial Intelligence. “The guys were playing around with GPT Chat, to see if a design would emerge, so they took what it produced, and then the artist used that as inspiration,” explained David.
Since the film was shot about two and a half years ago, the discussion around AI has changed a lot since then, even leading to the actors and writers strike in Hollywood, whose central theme was the regulation of this technology when creating new productions.
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In this regard, the actor pointed out that although sound editing and even color correction programs are increasingly used today, we are now more aware of the dangers of excessive use.
“We can’t eliminate the human beings, the movie is really scary, even though there were negative reactions to that part. Now we are surprised, because it is really important, and it is wonderful that it has become part of the collective conversation, so that in cinema we can make sure that humans are the ones telling the stories,” added the star of “The Dark Knight” and “Oppenheimer.”
