The Last Horror Movie With A Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score Came Out Four Years Ago
"Late Night With the Devil" might just be one of the buzziest horror flicks in recent memory. It's a 2024 movie, and it's blowing everyone away so far, currently standing at an impressive 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 52 reviews being counted. It's always possible some other critic will come along to bring that score down, but it's outstanding all the same. For now, the film has made some impressive company and achieved a feat that hasn't been done since 2020.
"Late Night With the Devil" is the first horror movie to garner a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100% since 2020's "His House," a Netflix original that maintained the rating with 125 reviews. It's a good reminder that the horror genre is still alive and well, with filmmakers finding unique ways to garner scares. Plus, this should be a good reminder to go watch "His House." The movie is about a Sudanese refugee couple who starts living in an English town and soon discovers an evilness around them.
Critics praised the film's inventiveness and topicality, with Tim Grierson of Screen International writing, "The film has much to say about grief, guilt, assimilation and the on-going refugee crisis. And on top of all that, it's also a nifty nerve-jangler." The true horror in "His House" concerns the frightening reality many refugees face, giving the film an extra bite that makes it worth watching years later.
What makes Late Night With the Devil so good?
"His House" is still very much worth watching, but anyone wanting to see the latest entry in the Rotten Tomatoes 100% club should check out "Late Night With the Devil," which is set to premiere in U.S. theaters on March 22 and on Shudder on April 19. The movie follows late-night talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), who interviews a young girl who survived a mass suicide event at a Satanic church. When she makes contact with the devil, things go horrifically awry.
It's a horror film that needs to be seen to be believed, and critics can't get enough of it. Ross McIndoe of Slant Magazine praised the movie, writing, "By taking the tricks and tropes associated with films about occult goings-on and applies them in the context of a 1970s talk show, Australian writer-directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes have conjured up a horror flick that's devilishly fun." Dennis Harvey of Variety largely agrees, praising the unique setting for the new possession film. "The resulting mix of vintage Me Decade showbiz cheese and 'Exorcist'-y demonic doings is distinctive, not to mention deftly handled by the [Cairnes] as both writers and directors," he wrote.
It's always good for a movie to be compared favorably to "The Exorcist," and it's all anchored by a bravado performance by Dastmalchian. He's no stranger to horror with a turn in "The Boogeyman," which had plenty of skin-crawling moments. And it sounds like "Late Night With the Devil" really gives him a chance to establish himself as a true horror icon.
What other horror movies are in the elusive 100% club?
All it takes is one outlier critic to reduce a movie's Rotten Tomatoes rating from 100% to a pitiful 99%. No doubt, there have been many excellent horror movies over the decades with exceptional scores, but it's rare for films to hit 100% and stay there. Outside of "Late Night With the Devil" and "His House," 2017's "One Cut of the Dead" also holds that distinction with 97 reviews from critics being added up. That's a Japanese horror-comedy about a film crew trying to make a zombie movie when actual zombies descend upon them.
2017 also saw the release of another horror flick that received a perfect score with 28 reviews total — "Creep 2." The sequel follows the serial killer from the first film who has a new videographer visit him. 2015's "Frankenstein," an adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel starring Carrie-Anne Moss, also hit 100% but with only 10 reviews.
To be fair, it's not quite as impressive when a movie only has a small pool of reviews to pull from to gain a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. It's more of something to brag about when there are dozens of reviews praising a film. As it stands, "Late Night With the Devil" is in some pretty elite company, making it a flick that should be on every horror aficionado's radar.