Late Night with the Devil is one of three recent movies that give habitual character actors the rare opportunity to showcase their leading role chops.

Before Late Night with the Devil, no one predicted that David Dastmalchian would star in a 2024 hit.

Bucking expectations in a different way, writer/director Henry Nelson allowed his father, Tim Blake Nelson, to prove his naturalistic acumen in Asleep in My Palm, a far cry from the Coen Brothers’ heightened sensibility that has all but come to define his typecasting. 

And Luc Besson has devoted a lot of his career to building movies around character actors: Jean Reno, Milla Jovovich, Dane DeHaan, and now, Caleb Landry Jones as THE DogMan.

(Relatedly, Besson’s 12 Monkeys was instrumental in establishing Brad Pitt as more than a matinee-idol heartthrob, contributing to the popular notion that he’s a character actor in a leading man’s body).

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So these three movies let us see character actors in leading roles for a change…

…while Sasquatch Sunset casts celebrities in leading roles, and then refuses to let us see them; they’re completely unrecognizable, even though their actual bodies are technically on screen for a majority of the movie. Unless you stay for the end credits — their names not being in the opening credits maintains their anonymity — you couldn’t know that two of the Sasquatches (Sasquatchi?) are Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough.