devil all the time movie review

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‘The Devil All the Time’ Review: Down-Home Livin’ and Dyin’

In this period drama, Tom Holland plays a country boy surrounded by Gothic ghouls, including Robert Pattinson’s preacher man.

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‘The Devil All the Time’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director antonio campos discusses a scene from his drama featuring tom holland and robert pattinson..

“NARRATOR: Hi, I’m Antonio Campos, and I’m the director of The Devil All the Time. So we’re about 2/3 of the way into the movie, we’re entering the third act. And Arvin has been spying on this preacher and has figured out that he did something to his stepsister. And so he is coming to get revenge. And one of the things I wanted to convey in this scene is that Arvin isn’t a killer. He comes in with the intent of killing him, and in the moment when he’s going to shoot, he gets nervous and he sits down, and he’s got to muster up the courage to go through with the act. He’s a violent kid, but he’s not a killer yet. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to try and give you two perspectives in this scene, one from the perspective of Teagardin talking to this young man that’s come in.” “You got time for a sinner?” Who wants to confess, get something off his chest, and the other, in close up on Arvin’s face, where we are with Arvin, where we’re with him, we’re seeing that he’s nervous, and that he’s a little anxious. “I’ve done lustful acts.” So we get this angle here, this close-up angle, and that’s where we’re in it with him, and we get to see into his eyes. And then there’s the frontal angle, and the frontal, we’re withholding his eyes. We’re seeing it the way that Teagardin sees him. The other thing there is this little technical thing— is Teagardin has seen Arvin in church with his grandmother and with his stepsister, but with his hat on, and the angle that he’s looking at him, he can’t quite identify him. So that’s the other reason why this wardrobe was really important for the scene. This is, by far, my favorite scene in the whole movie. And I was so excited for these two characters to come together. And for this force of good and this force of evil to finally meet. And it’s the beginning of what becomes Arvin coming up against a lot of different evil forces in the story. It’s a very long scene, so we really wanted you to feel every single beat. And so this scene took about— I think we edited this scene on and off for about nine months. “One day I got this girl in my truck and I drove her out to the sticks, and I had my way with her.” [SIGHS] “She put up a fight?” “No.” And it was really about trying to capture every single detail that these two great actors gave us. I really think that Tom Holland is the greatest actor of his generation. And I think he’s so natural, and he conveys such a wonderful humanity, but still manages to capture this kind of danger. And that Rob Pattinson is this kind of mad genius, and you don’t know what he’s going to give you on the day. And so I had this wonderful footage to work with. And it was really about trying to nail every little micro expression, every gesture. And by doing that, we create this kind of— we start building up the tension to the point where then Arvin stands up and, with standing up, he reveals his eyes and reveals his identity to Teagardin. “I’ve been watching your every move for the last couple weeks. You can’t get enough of that Reaster girl, can you? Is that how you did my Lenora, too?” And this kind of face off, here, was really— this is where it kind of, like, really finely tuned the editing to make sure that every little gesture, once the gun revealed itself, is dangerous for Teagardin. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, son. Why don’t you put the gun down, and we can talk all about it?” So we really wanted to highlight each beat, and feel every time that Tom gets worked up and Teagardin gets scared. In the sound design, here, you really hear the rattle of the gun. “It was just like this— this Reaster girl.” You get the shake of Arvin’s hand through the sound of the gun rattling, which is one of these things that we didn’t plan on, but when we got into the mix, you really kind of— you realize you needed a sound to convey that sort of nervousness, to heighten the nervousness. ”—soul too?” “Look, I— I didn’t have nothing to do with that.” And then you get this sort of, like, this anger building up. So now Arvin, who came into the scene so, so nervous to go through with the act, is now getting angrier and angrier and angrier. And he’s building up the courage to either shoot or not shoot. We don’t know yet. We don’t know if he’s going to change his mind, if Teagardin’s going to manage to talk his way out of it. “I ain’t going to take the blame for no bastard child. It would ruin me, man.” My wife is the editor, Sophia Subercaseaux. She and I always loved every one of Rob’s deliveries here. “She was delusional. She’s crazy. That’s it.” “Or she was just lonely.”

By Manohla Dargis

It’s a mystery where Robert Pattinson picked up the eccentric nasal whine that he (amusingly) deploys in “The Devil All the Time.” Pattinson plays one of those bad preachers who ride through certain deep-fried fictions, the smooth talkers with scripture on their forked tongues and sin in their withered hearts. Sometimes these devious souls have “love” and “hate” tattooed on their fingers (or at least once watched Robert Mitchum’s unholy man in the 1955 noir “The Night of the Hunter”). However wicked, these bad men of the cloth invariably embody religious hypocrisy.

No one is up to any good in “Devil,” a leisurely wallow in the kind of flamboyant evil that some filmmakers just can’t quit, won’t quit. The preacher, Rev. Preston Teagardin, is the least of this story’s ills. By the time he does his worst, knuckles have been bloodied, bullets fired, a dog sacrificed and a man tortured, to list just some of this potboiler’s horrors, which also include a pair of industrious serial killers. Here, in a swath of Appalachia that stretches from Ohio to West Virginia — a land of green woods, white people and Gothic clichés — little rises but everything must converge.

Directed by Antonio Campos, the busy, sprawling movie centers on the manifestly unlucky Arvin, played as an adult by Tom Holland, best known as Spider-Man. A second Marvel alumnus, Sebastian Stan, plays a sheriff. The movie features other blurrily familiar faces, including those of Bill Skarsgard and Haley Bennett, who play Arvin’s parents. They met in an Ohio diner where she’s a waitress and he’s a customer, a World War II veteran home; that same day, a photographer (Jason Clarke) meets another waitress (Riley Keough). Arvin’s parents wed and settle in Ohio for their unhappily ever after; the other couple rides off to kill and kill again.

The coincidence of these two matches cleaves the story into not-quite parallel parts that eventually meet again. Until then, Arvin faces minor and major miseries, and ends up living with relatives in West Virginia. There, he mostly protects a family ward (Eliza Scanlen), whose own unhappy history involves a victimized mother (Mia Wasikowska) and odiously malevolent Bible thumpers. Every so often, the serial killers briefly pop up so that Keough can goose the movie. Things only really heat up for Arvin when Rev. Teagardin oozes into town, talking down to his flock and wearing a frilly shirt that doesn’t stay white for long.

Adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s novel by Campos and his brother, Paulo Campos, the narrative is organized around a series of violent catastrophes. There’s a suggestion that war plays a role in these disasters, evidenced by both a grisly flashback to World War II and a nod to Vietnam. But like everything else in the movie — poverty notably included — war is something that people endure, like bad weather. Despite the wised-up voice-over (read by Pollock) that adds much-welcome glints of wry detachment, there is little sense that the people in this world do anything but suffer or cause others to suffer in between working, church going and occasionally popping out babies.

Campos, whose movies include “Christine,” has always been a capable craftsman, and everything in “The Devil All the Time” looks and sounds professionally engineered. The images are well lit and have shape and texture, and the music and sound design are equally well considered. (The veteran music supervisor Randall Poster is one of the producers.) Every faded dress looks attentively fitted, each ramshackle house artfully weathered. If the performances are considerably less persuasive it’s partly because Campos shows no interest in the inner lives of his characters. And while Pattinson’s and Keough’s roles are risible, the actors at least show signs of (comic) life.

Campos is interested in Arvin’s world or, specifically, its cruelties, but he demonstrates no real curiosity about it or its inhabitants. An early description to Arvin’s childhood hometown offers a rare longer view of these people, “nearly all of them connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another,” the narrator says, a direct quote from the novel. This inbreeding perhaps explains why there are no Black characters onscreen, though there’s a handful in the novel, mentioned in passing. Whatever the case, as a result all of the pain and anguish, all the drama and generational trauma, is experienced only by white people, one of the few directorial choices here of actual note.

The Devil All the Time Rated R for gruesome, bloody violence against all creatures. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. In select theaters and on Netflix . Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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The Devil All the Time Reviews

I love the final product we got and with the incredible cast performances, compelling story, and the dark tone that lingered throughout the long-yet-warranted screen time, this is a film that has stuck with me since I first saw it.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2024

Tom Holland and an all-star cast shine in The Devil All The Time, a midwestern gothic crime drama whose well-crafted, meaningful ending makes up for a confused narrative structure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 12, 2023

The narrative’s focus on religion is bold and audacious, showing how blind faith can negatively influence people’s lives, taking them and others through the most painful paths.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 24, 2023

The ensemble of actors is potent and committed. They're a buffet of pretend dialects and drawls, but each performance is as unwavering as it is neat.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 20, 2023

It’s an old-fashioned romp, a kind of narrative which is hardly in vogue nowadays. The acting is world-class, however, and more than makes up for the glitches...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 3, 2022

The Devil All the Time is an engrossing gothic tale full of backwoods preachers, thrill killers, religious zealots, and a handful of broken, weathered souls that cannot come to grips with the horrors of war that religion could not wash clean.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 2, 2022

“The Devil all the Time” is a cold and relentless tale of human depravity with hardly a glimmer of light. And the few instances of hope (and I do mean FEW) are usually planted just so they can be squashed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 20, 2022

One of the best casted movies I've seen. "The Devil All the Time" is all about its characters and their unwilling way of deepening themselves in an endless whole of tragedy. Full review in Spanish

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 7, 2022

The Devil All the Time is one of the best-cast films in recent memory. But all the talent and craft behind the picture cannot overcome the story's overbearing unpleasantness, which is, frankly, exhausting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 17, 2022

Overall, the film is well-acted, and there is a lot of drama, but if there is any takeaway from this film it would be, avoid the woods in the country at all cost.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 2, 2021

A grim, violent, and weighty film that captures the brutality and sorrow of small-town rural America.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5 / 5 | Jun 25, 2021

The Devil All the Time is all plot; it somehow manages to be both terribly busy and very boring.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2021

Two and a half hours of unrelenting sadness, anxiety and distress - but impossible to stop watching.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2021

Gripping and harrowing, but why?

Full Review | Mar 31, 2021

The actors' merit lies in achieving an impact in the limited amount of time that they have to intervene. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2021

[T]he film truly feels like an amalgam of every Southern Gothic trope thrown together ... but there is no shortage of talent and the performances feel authentic.

Full Review | Mar 3, 2021

Despite all it has going for it, however, the Southern Gothic-flavored slice of noir never manages to hook the viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 21, 2021

This film doubles down on the grimness in such a way that it takes itself too seriously.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 15, 2021

The performances are strong but if there's a more unrelentingly bleak film in 2020 I will do my best to avoid it.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Feb 10, 2021

No one would want to live in a world like the one portrayed in The Devil All The Time, and even watching it for a couple of hours is a hard sell. Movies about bad people can work, but they need much more depth than the filmmakers delivered here.

Full Review | Feb 5, 2021

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‘The Devil All the Time’ Review: Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in a Netflix Drama of Small-Town Sin

It's hard to imagine how a movie with this much sordid crime and violence could be this rote.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Robert Pattinson has a way of making scene-stealing entrances, sometimes midway through a movie, like when he showed up in “The King” wearing long orange-blond tresses and a twisted leer as the Dauphin of France, a lewdly dissipated flyweight troublemaker. He does it again in “ The Devil All the Time ,” a drama of sin and salvation and crime and violence and a whole lot of other heavy Christian noir stuff, set in southern rural Ohio from 1957 to 1965. Pattinson plays a preacher, and the preacher is (of course) a scoundrel, which we know from the moment we see him, since he favors powder-blue sport coats worn over open-collared shirts with ruffles, which makes it look like he’s been up all night in a high-school-prom tuxedo. With that patented Pattinsonian flop of hair, and that perpetually pale complexion, he’s like Elvis as an undead apostle.

The preacher, whose name is Preston Teagardin, specializes in fulminating sermons scorched by the fire of sin, his face contorted with righteousness. In other words: Any preacher who gets this high on high dudgeon has something to hide. In a rainstorm, seated in his white finned Chevy along with Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), a dewy and trusting parishioner, he tells her, “To show yourself as the lord made his first children is to truly show yourself to him.” That’s a fancy way of saying, “Take off your clothes.” Later, when she’s pregnant, and she asks him about all the things they’ve done in that car, he says, “You must be crazy coming into the lord’s house and talking all this trash.”

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For Pattinson, playing a domineering Bible Belt sleaze is a cred move (a sign that he doesn’t have to be liked), and he does a stylish job of it. But the movie that surrounds him is a long and doughy mystery-dud. It turns out that everyone in the small town of Knockemstiff has something to hide, but we see all the rote dirty secrets laid out like dishes at a potluck (that’s the thing about Netflix lighting — it doesn’t conceal anything). And so the movie, directed and co-written by Antonio Campos, lacks the spark of discovery.

“The Devil All the Time” is based on a 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollack, and Pollack, sounding like the defending world champion of the Billy Bob Thornton impersonation contest, narrates it in a night-of-the-living-drawl voiceover that never lets up. You could teach this movie in film classes as a textbook case of telling rather than showing in a way that lulls and numbs. “Lenora,” says the narrator, “had stopped asking Arvin to join her at Helen’s grave. He didn’t mind much. His mind would always drift back to Willard and the prayer log, and his poor dog Jack. Besides, he’d gotten a job workin’ on a road crew, and was busy making some money…”

Sorry, but a little of that is dull, and a lot of it is deadly. Campos has such reverence for the novel that he has illustrated it more than he’s dramatized it.

The hero, Arvin Russell, is eventually played by Tom Holland , who has made a smart move in taking on the role of someone who can kick the s—t out of people and blast bullets through them without a twinge. Arvin grows up in Knockemstiff under the shadow of his father, Willard (Bill Skarsgård), a World War II veteran who teaches Arvin to use his fists in a righteous, make-the-sinners-pay way. But there’s a lot of sin to be cleansed. The town is a hotbed of corruption, along with the kind of Christianity so punitive it creates monsters of repression. People like the bug-eyed Roy (Harry Melling), who testifies in church about how much God has freed him by pouring a cannister of spiders onto his own face. He then marries Helen (Mia Wasikowska) and shows her God’s glory in the darkest way.

There is also a fundamentalist serial killer on the loose. Carl (Jason Clarke), a burly creep, works as a team with Sandy ( Riley Keough ), a prostitute whose bond with him is never remotely explained; they pick up handsome strangers along the highway, who Carl then coerces into having sex with Sandy, all so that he can photograph the action — and then kill the stranger, which is some sort of cleansing ritual for him. Melling’s spider freak, Clarke’s shutterbug freak, Pattinson’s preacher-stud freak — that’s too many heart-of-darkness characters in one movie, as if we’d lose interest without a surfeit of them. All that’s missing is Tim Blake Nelson as a hillbilly gas-station attendant who’s really a cannibal.

The violent kinkiness is everywhere, yet in another way it’s just window dressing. Arvin, a young man who’s good inside, shows each of the sinners what’s what. Yet you never feel much investment in his odyssey of salvation. “The Devil All the Time” shows us a lot of bad behavior, but the movie isn’t really interested in what makes the sinners tick. And without that lurid curiosity, it’s just a series of Sunday School lessons: a noir that wants to scrub away the darkness.

Reviewed online, Sept. 10, 2020. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 138 MIN.

Production: A Netflix release of a Bronx Moving Co., Nine Stories production. Producers: Randall Poster, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riva Marker, Max Born. Executive producers: Jared Ian Goldman, Marc Hammer, Annie Marter.
Crew: Director: Antonio Campos. Screenplay: Antonio Campos, Paul Campos. Camera: Lol Crawley. Editor: Sofia Subercaseaux. Music: Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurrians.
With: Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Robert Pattinson, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Harry Melling, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska, Donald Ray Pollack.

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The Devil All the Time

Jason Clarke, Harry Melling, Bill Skarsgård, Robert Pattinson, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, and Tom Holland in The Devil All the Time (2020)

Sinister characters converge around a young man devoted to protecting those he loves in a postwar backwoods town teeming with corruption and brutality. Sinister characters converge around a young man devoted to protecting those he loves in a postwar backwoods town teeming with corruption and brutality. Sinister characters converge around a young man devoted to protecting those he loves in a postwar backwoods town teeming with corruption and brutality.

Antonio Campos
Paulo Campos
Donald Ray Pollock
Bill Skarsgård
Tom Holland
Banks Repeta
1K User reviews
214 Critic reviews
55 Metascore
3 nominations

(as Michael Banks Repeta)

Deputy Lee Bodecker

Rev. Preston Teagardin

Helen Hatton

Leroy Brown
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Trivia Robert Pattinson didn't work with a dialect coach and crafted his high-pitched Southern drawl on his own. The actor hid his accent from everyone - including director Antonio Campos - until day one of filming. Other actors sent Campos recordings of the voices they were working on - but not Pattinson, preferring to rehearse by himself and getting self-conscious by being judged before actually standing in front of the camera. Campos called Pattinson a "mad genius who can do anything."
Goofs After Arvin shoots Sandy in the passenger seat, her dead body is re-positioned two or three times.

Narrator : Years ago, Willard had fitted together a weathered cross above a fallen tree in a small clearing behind his house. He came every morning and evening to talk to God. It seemed to his son that his father fought the Devil all the time.

Connections Featured in Sean Chandler Talks About: The Devil All the Time Movie Review (2020)
Soundtracks Dream Written by Johnny Mercer Performed by The Pied Pipers Published by Warner Chappell Music Corp., Michael H. Goldsen, Inc. by courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Courtesy of Capitol Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises

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Sep 16, 2020
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September 10, 2020 (United States)
United States
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Vùng Đất Bị Ruồng Bỏ
Main Street, Montevallo, Alabama, USA
Bronx Moving Co.
Nine Stories Productions
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Runtime 2 hours 18 minutes
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‘the devil all the time’: film review.

Donald Ray Pollock's violent novel 'The Devil All the Time' comes to Netflix courtesy of director/co-writer Antonio Campos and with Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Riley Keough in starring roles.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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Blood is spilled by devout Christians, psychopaths and ordinary folks in The Devil All the Time , and if God is watching, his response never varies: He keeps out of it.

Antonio Campos’ ( Christine ) adaptation of the even more violent 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock brings a lot of talent to bear on material descended straight from Flannery O’Connor via Cormac McCarthy. Set in the ’50s and ’60s in two rural Appalachian towns, it ties faith and violence together in a less showy and obvious way than many of its predecessors. Though its structure doesn’t always work to maximum effect, the grim picture gets more involving as it goes and benefits from a hell of a cast.

Release date: Sep 16, 2020

Though he doesn’t appear until well into the film, Tom Holland ‘s Arvin will be the story’s heart. We meet Arvin at age 9, where he’s played by Michael Banks Repeta as the rapt son of Bill Skarsgard’s Willard. Much hopping around in time is done in these opening scenes, as the narration (read well by the novelist himself) struggles a bit to introduce the cast of characters. One scene, for instance, finds Willard and another man separately meeting the loves of their lives at the same luncheonette on the same afternoon. These four characters will be linked up, in a way, late in this decades-long tale. But being rather remote, the connection doesn’t seem worth making, given such a busy exposition.

Skarsgard sometimes seems to channel Michael Shannon as Willard, who went on a hiatus from God after witnessing horrors in World War II, then becomes a prayerful man again. He keeps his son by his side at a makeshift altar behind the family cabin. But even the most impassioned prayers don’t keep Arvin from becoming an orphan, sent to live with his nervous grandma Emma (Kristin Griffith).

His new stepsister, Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), has a similarly tragic backstory. Her father (Harry Melling) was a preacher with an insane belief in the Holy Ghost’s power — instead of snake-handling, he proved his faith with a jar of spiders, and locked himself in a closet for weeks after he was disfigured by them. Her mother ( Mia Wasikowska ) was a gentle woman who met a sudden death.

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‘The Devil All the Time’: A Southern Gothic-Lite, All Tied Up in Knots

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

As town names go, Knockemstiff is something of a knockout. It’s evocative, to be sure: a pulpy heartland-gothic handle as evocative as the wizened and instantly recognizable face of an aged character actor. It’s a place that immediately sounds like it has a preacher you can’t trust, a sheriff with ulterior ambitions, and a steady stream of low-lying but grotesquely violent crooks passing through. It’s also, it turns out, a real place in Ohio — and the hometown of author Donald Ray Pollock, whose 2011 novel The Devil All the Time the filmmaker Antonio Campos has adapted into a movie about a young man, Arvin ( Tom Holland ), and his step-sister Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), two souls caught in the muck of fate. (The film is currently streaming on Netflix.)

It’s is a mid-century, multi-generational, very American crime story, in which the capacities for violence and deceit seem as natural to the state of man as any modicum of goodness, if not moreso. Knockemstiff isn’t the only setting here: Devil drifts between that quiet locus of damnation and the similarly bleak Coal River, West Virginia, with a few stops in between. If only the movie were up to the task of making sense of it all.

There’s an inkling of potential at the start, which opens not with Arvin or Lenora, but the generation above them: specifically, their wayward parents. Arvin, we learn, is taught from an early age to worship God. But his father, Willard (Bill Skarsgård), is a psychologically wounded veteran of the second world war, and when a grim end befalls his wife, he makes a choice that sends young Arvin’s life spinning. Lenora has a troubled backstory as well, involving a different dangerously pious father (Harry Melling) and another, far more unfortunate death. (Lenora’s mother s played by Mia Wasikowska, underused here.)

Eventually the duo wind up in the home of Willard’s grandmother and uncle, with one of them coming under the suspicious thrall of a new preacher, Reverend Preston Teagardin ( Robert Pattinson ). And from there, fates will twine and preordained destinies will write themselves into the wet cement of the premise in ways that, for all the narrative complexity dished out here, feel fairly par for the course. I’ve yet to even mention the storylines relevant to the film’s expanded cast (Sebastian Stan, Jason Clarke, Riley Keough) or the grocery list of dark subjects at the its center: necrophilia, suicide, cancer — you name it, we got it.

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The Devil All the Time is somehow far better at setting the stage for its story than it is at airing out all the interesting nooks and grabbing hold of its clear potential, perhaps because there’s so much to grab. It’s a gothic tale, but Campos’ idea of what that means is too literal, as if he’d read the opening line of the novel — “On a dismal morning near the end of a wet October ….” — and decided to manifest this, and only this, into a movie. His film is overly steeped in a well-trod, grim sense of heartland mythology — not inappropriately, given the film’s subject and setting. Muscular, masculine, post-war crime narratives like this are, after all, an essential ingredient of American folklore, material that often has the makings of well-made entertainment. This is a fact which Devil, with its wide, textured, 35mm images, is only too aware of. By the end of the movie, so are we.

From the opening scene, much of the most interesting material gets relegated to an ever-present, omniscient voiceover narrator — voiced by Pollock himself, who unfurls the story in a way that the film, for all its production value, apparently can’t. He relays the finer aspects of this story with a novelistic eye for detail and explanation. He tells us of the characters’ pasts and futures, draws the connections between them, weds their inner lives to the grand but auspiciously humble arc of the story.

But the narrator also has a habit of showing up what’s onscreen, and you get the sense that Campos doesn’t seem to trust what it is his images can give us on their own. After the camera lands on a woman’s face, Pollock intones: “The girl’s family had burned up in a house fire, leaving the poor thing all alone.” Well, shit. There’s also a character who, facing death, gazes skyward toward an absent God, at which point we hear that he “looked up at the clouds drifting by and wondered if that’s what death would be like, just floating away in the air.” It’s not that the sentiment is out of pocket; it’s exactly this sense of piety and the doubts it harbors, all of which have already firmly been established, that make the narration redundant.The story doesn’t quite feel up the task of telling itself.

The cast — a compatible mix of character actors, dependable pros it’s always nice to see, charming weirdos (Wasikowska and Keogh, for example), and box office stars appealingly eager to prove their chops (Pattinson, Holland) — try their best to dredge feeling and meaning out of the dull material. Only Pattinson — eely, eerie, intriguing — manages to add a spark of genuine curiosity here, raising his voice a pitch and announcing his character’s intrinsic lack of integrity with deft understatement.

Still, none of it really sails. The Devil All the Time has the pretensions of a mythopoetic story that’s chipping away at a community’s dark underbelly. But here the misery is as belly-up and eager to be noticed as a house cat or a dead fish. It seems that for all their talk of resurrection and forgiveness, for all their glimmers of goodness and selflessness amid pronounced local evil, God is intent on failing these people — almost as intent, in the end, as the movie itself.

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Everyone's A Sinner In 'The Devil All The Time'

Justin Chang

Tom Holland plays Arvin, a young man who refuses to let evil go unpunished in The Devil All the Time. Glen Wilson/Netflix hide caption

Tom Holland plays Arvin, a young man who refuses to let evil go unpunished in The Devil All the Time.

The Devil All the Time, now streaming on Netflix , has enough awful characters, festering secrets and dead bodies to furnish a whole TV series, though I'm not sure I'd want to see a longer version of this story. The movie is based on a densely plotted 2011 novel by the Ohio-born author Donald Ray Pollock, and it's grim in ways that can be both exciting and a little wearying: so many twists and betrayals, so many horrific acts of violence.

I was never bored over the course of the movie's two-hour-plus running time. But after a while, I felt that I wasn't watching a complex drama so much as an elaborate thesis about the banality of evil and the abuse of power — especially in patches of blue-collar America where evangelical Christianity holds sway.

That might make The Devil All the Time sound as though it touches on the present, but it takes place in the past, mainly the 1950s and '60s. The script, co-written by the director Antonio Campos and his brother, Paulo Campos, first introduces us to a man named Willard Russell, played by Bill Skarsgård. He lives in a small Ohio paper-mill town called Knockemstiff. The traumas that Willard experienced as a soldier during World War II have given him a powerful if sometimes disturbing set of religious convictions: Willard believes that he can influence God's will, if he just prays hard enough and performs the occasional blood sacrifice, like shooting the family dog.

One of the heavier themes of The Devil All the Time is the way sin and trauma are often handed down from one generation to the next. And so Willard passes his violence along to his 9-year-old son, Arvin. After his father dies tragically, Arvin is sent to live in West Virginia with his grandmother and an adopted stepsister, Lenora.

Years later, Arvin and Lenora are both teenagers, played by Tom Holland of the Spider-Man movies and Eliza Scanlen. Lenora, a sweet young woman, is relentlessly harassed by the young men at her school. One day, Arvin tries to fight them off and is brutally beaten up.

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Arvin has a good heart but a fierce temper, and he refuses to let evil go unpunished. And it's no accident that most of the evil deeds in this movie are committed by men in positions of authority, especially religious authority. Harry Melling plays an oily preacher whose sermons are full of fire and brimstone, and who becomes obsessed with the idea that he can bring the dead back to life — even if he has to kill somebody first to prove it. Years later, another Scripture-spouting charlatan shows up: a sinister minister who goes by the flamboyant name of Preston Teagardin, and who is played with equal flamboyance by Robert Pattinson .

There are a lot of other nasty customers prowling around the edges of this movie, including a corrupt local sheriff, played by Sebastian Stan, and a devious married couple (Jason Clarke and Riley Keough) who like to pick up hitchhikers and have their twisted way with them.

Everyone's a sinner in The Devil All the Time , and with very few exceptions, nearly every character is either predator or prey. That brutally pessimistic view of the world is nothing new for the gifted director Antonio Campos, whose previous movies include Afterschool and Christine — disturbing psychological dramas that were also sharp critiques of technology and media and their power over a mass audience.

In The Devil All the Time , the only mass media of note is religion. It's what connects everyone and controls everyone, even those who try to exploit it to their advantage. As a person of Christian faith who shares Campos' skepticism about the manipulations of organized religion, I often found myself nodding in agreement. I also found the movie ultimately repetitive in its grisliness, and simplistic in some of the ways that it accuses religion of being.

What kept me watching was the vigor of the performances and the immersive beauty of Campos' images, which he shot on 35 mm film. Most of all, I enjoyed the story's extensive voiceover narration, which is provided by none other than the author of the original novel, Pollock. His dry, sardonic observations bring a rich authenticity to this dark and unnerving story, set in a part of the country he clearly knows well. I wouldn't want to live there all the time, but for a while, at least, he makes it a fascinating place to visit.

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The Devil All The Time First Reviews: Tom Holland Is "Heartbreaking" In This Violent, Literary Crime Saga

Antonio campos' adaptation of donald ray pollock's novel might have been better as a miniseries, say critics, but the star-studded ensemble – especially holland and robert pattinson – make this dark tale worth a watch..

TAGGED AS: movies , Netflix , thriller

(Photo by Glen Wilson/Netflix)

Future Batman Robert Pattinson and current Spider-Man Tom Holland face off in The Devil All the Time , a violent Midwest-Gothic drama hitting Netflix this month. They’re only part of an extensive ensemble cast, the performances of which are the movie’s highlight, according to the first reviews. Beyond the acting, though, appreciation for the Antonio Campos -helmed adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s epic and violent crime novel varies with regards to its length, focus, and especially its violence.

Here’s what critics are saying about The Devil All the Time :

Does the movie do justice to the book?

“ The Devil All the Time [is a] darkly riveting realization of Donald Ray Pollock’s best-selling novel.” – Hope Madden, Columbus Underground

“Campos has such reverence for the novel that he’s illustrated it more than he’s dramatized it.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“Perhaps Campos is too closely wedded to Pollock’s book (the author even provides the voiceover) to allow it to entirely adjust to a new medium.” – Matt Maytum, Total Film

“Screenwriters Antonio and brother Paulo Campos can’t meet the demands of omniscient fiction, shuffling scenarios with the fervor of a manic story editor zigzagging index cards across a whiteboard…a miniseries treatment would’ve suited this book more elegantly.” – Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

“Perhaps the story would have had more to breathe as a glossy limited series.” – Hannah Woodhead, Little White Lies

Is the movie – like the book – very, very violent?

“The movie is often disturbing and grotesque, not the ideal Netflix watch if you’re looking for something light. And the violence comes suddenly and in excess.” – Deirdre Molumby, entertainment.ie

“Once or twice, the violence is shocking even when we know it’s coming, but often it’s just a heaping-on, and some viewers will feel like guilty participants in misery tourism.” – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

“The most extreme violence occurs off-screen, with the aftermath often portrayed in grisly tableaux.” – Tom Beasley, Flickering Myth

“With a heavier hand, this film would have been a savage beating or a backwoods horror of the most grotesque kind.” – Hope Madden, Columbus Underground

“An incredibly gruesome dog death portrayed in the first act is unshakable.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

What would y ou compare the movie to?

“It’s like a southern-fried Richard Curtis movie. It’s Gothic, Actually.” – Tom Beasley, Flickering Myth

“Kind of Mars Attacks! as done by Cormac McCarthy” – Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

“Like a weird religious lovechild of 2012’s The Place Beyond The Pines and 2013’s Prisoners .” – Callum Crumlish, Daily Express

How is author Donald Ray Pollock as a narrator?

“Pollock brings a pleasing, smoky rasp of weary authority. He knows these venal, murderous, craven characters pretty well.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

“While an omniscient narrator does feature in the source material, here it feels heavy-handed and distracting, and ends up giving the final film an unintended comic element that isn’t quite in keeping with the deathly dark happenings on screen.” – Hannah Woodhead, Little White Lies

“The result feels less like a worthy tribute to Pollock’s sanguinary prose than an odd, slightly irksome blend of movie and audio book.” – Dan Jolin, Empire Magazine

What about the killer on-screen ensemble cast?

“It’s worth seeing for an intriguingly cast ensemble, authenticating the milieu as much as possible.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

“Though there are no individual standouts in the cast, they all turn in intensely committed work that tethers us to their characters’ snowballing predicaments.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

“A film that often feels like a sort of young actors’ Olympics; a baroque showcase for Gen-Z refugees of the industry’s biggest franchises to showcase their indie bona fides.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“Every actor blends into the woodsy atmosphere with a sense of unease that permeates the air. No stars here, all character actors in service of the film’s unsettling calling.” – Hope Madden, Columbus Underground

“While the acting is all very good, there are moments when the cast members look bewildered, as if asking themselves how the heck their agents landed them in this gig.” – Deirdre Molumby, entertainment.ie

How is Tom Holland?

“The best thing to come out of the movie is seeing Tom Holland in a new light.” – Deirdre Molumby, entertainment.ie

“It’s a very different role for Holland to his energetic, peppy Peter Parker, but he brings a discomfort and a sadness to the character that fits him like a glove.” – Tom Beasley, Flickering Myth

“It’s maybe most gratifying to see Holland so far from Peter Parker mode; his performance is delicately underplayed.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“It is also Holland who is the most compelling to watch…because of the subdued intensity he lends to the character. He goes from placid and contained to explosively violent in what seems like seconds.” – Gabriella Geisinger

“Holland is perfectly withdrawn and quiet for so much of the film that when he is driven to action, it’s shocking and unexpected. He’s a combination of angst, guilt and barely contained rage.” – Steve Prokopy, Third Coast Review

“Arvin is made even more complex by Holland’s guile and intrinsic internalization. He is heartbreaking, show-stopping, and entirely fantastic. His best performance yet. – Callum Crumlish, Daily Express

“Holland, sadly, doesn’t impress…[he] just isn’t right for this role. He seems too fresh, too clean to play such a haunted, violent character.” – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

And what about Robert Pattinson?

“Pattinson’s turn as pedophile preacher Preston Teagardin is the obvious highlight.” – Hannah Woodhead, Little White Lies

“Pattinson delivers another striking, film-stealing supporting turn with a hear-it-to-believe-it high-pitched Southern twang.” – Matt Maytum, Total Film

“For Pattinson, playing a domineering Bible Belt sleaze is a cred move (a sign that he doesn’t have to be liked), and he does a good job of it.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“Only Pattinson evinces an understanding that irony may be the one workable option after earnest excellence has been ruled out…of all the stupendously bad accent work on display here, only his is as funny as it should be.” – Charles Bramesco, The Playlist

“Pattinson is clearly having a blast, giving one of the weirdest damn performances of his career…I thought it fit the often surreal tone of the film perfectly. Or maybe I just like watching Pattinson ham it up.” – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

“Then there’s Robert Pattinson, whose genteel southern accent is more miss than hit, but whose skeeviness is palpable through the screen.” – Gabriella Geisinger

“I don’t really know what he’s doing here, besides taking a little too long with every line reading.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Any other standout performances?

“Riley Keough, too, is a standout, adding layers and depth to a character who could easily have been a one-note sexpot caricature.” – Tom Beasley, Flickering Myth

“The film’s most stirring turns come from two young and gifted actresses [Mia Wasikowska and Eliza Scanlen] handed barely more than 10 minutes of screen time apiece.” – Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

Are there any other positive elements?

“Campos and cinematographer Lol Crawley do a superb job of creating an ominous atmosphere, as if despair and tragedy are lurking around every small-town street corner, down every stretch of country road.” – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

“Credit should be given for a predictably excellent period soundtrack chosen by music supervisors Randall Poster and Meghan Currier.” – John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter

Is it too much movie?

“If you stick with the lax pace, the slow-burn reveals are worth the wait.” – Gabriella Geisinger

“You can’t say it doesn’t keep you on your toes…But it’s a long movie, clocking in at 140 minutes, and there are several points at which it drags.” – Deirdre Molumby, entertainment.ie

“There are times when the movie threatens to lose focus, but for the most part, this train keeps chugging on down the rickety tracks to its blood-soaked conclusion.” – Tom Beasley, Flickering Myth

“[Campos’] greatest feat may be that he was able to wrangle a story as ripe and unwieldy as Devil at all…and somehow still managing to land on the grim side of fascinating.” – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“Like so many characters in this glum, shaggy ramble of a film, Campos gets lost in the woods.” – Charles Bramesco, The Playlist

Is the timing right for The Devil All the Time ?

“ The Devil All the Time feel[s] like a movie tailor-made for the current hellscape we’re all trapped in.” – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

“It’s 2020. We’re already familiar with abject misery.” – Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction

The Devil All the Time is available to stream on Netflix from September 16, 2020.

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In The Devil All the Time , it would seem that director Antonio Campos had assembled all the makings of a great film: A wildly talented, if not necessarily all A-list cast; well-regarded source material in the 2011 Donald Ray Pollock novel of the same name and a story rooted in universal themes about doing the right thing and conquering evil. However, what Campos - who co-wrote the film with Paulo Campos - delivers is a supremely grim take on the world that works better as a showcase for its actors than as the violent slice of life movie too obsessed with 1950s Americana and southern religiosity to deliver a satisfying story. The Devil All the Time is a slow, sprawling thriller, unfurling with creeping tension, but the cast's performances are more rewarding than the story.

Set against the backdrop of rural towns in Ohio and West Virginia across the 50s and 60s, The Devil All the Time follows multiple people through their lives, as their stories connect in various, sometimes surprising ways. There's war veteran Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård), whose religion pushes him to violent acts when his wife Charlotte (Haley Bennett) falls sick with cancer. Their son, Arvin (Tom Holland), winds up with his grandmother, who's also taken in young Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) when her parents - Helen (Mia Wasikowska) and Roy (Harry Melling) disappear. Elsewhere, the film also follows serial killers Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy (Riley Keough) as well as the corrupt Sheriff Lee Boedecker (Sebastian Stan). When a new preacher, Reverend Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson), arrives in town, it sets Arvin on a path that has him hurtling toward other figures in the story.

Related: Every Movie & TV Show Releasing On Netflix In September 2020

Like many movies adapted from books, The Devil All the Time suffers from a specific kind of pacing wherein the film moves too fast sometimes as it tries to hit all the necessary plot points, but too slow in others, when Campos truly digs into a scene and the actors get a chance to really showcase their talents. Add in the fact that The Devil All the Time jumps around from one character to another, with only Pollock's voiceover to offer a connective thread (which is much easier to follow in a book than in a film), and Campos delivers a movie that is, at its best, like watching a novel come alive, and at its worst, a confusing mess of story threads that can be hard to follow. The overwrought plot and characters are at least interesting enough, and Campos' ability to build the tension of movie - with the occasional, violent stopgap - will keep viewers compelled to watch, but the limp conclusion may also leave them wondering if the journey was worth it.

What really makes The Devil All the Time worth the two hours and 18-minute runtime are the performances of the cast, particularly Holland and Pattinson. The actors are magnetic in their own right, Holland as the ferociously just Arvin and Pattinson as the sleazy narcissistic preacher. But when the two actors share a scene at the start of the third act, it's positively crackling with energy. Their performances combined with Campos' skilfull touch at ratcheting up the tension creates the most memorable display of talent in the film. It's enough to wish The Devil All the Time gave more time to Holland and Pattinson's characters, instead of following others through their stories. Certainly, there's enough for many of the other stars to showcase their talents, particularly Stan and Skarsgård, but they are each given considerably less material to work with. Ultimately, The Devil All the Time feels spread a little too thin for a movie, even if the actors are making the most of it.

In the end, The Devil All the Time isn't necessarily an enjoyable watch, with a number of especially violent visuals and emotionally brutal story beats that serve to break up by the tension of expecting another awful thing to happen next. With the slow, stunted pacing of the movie, it makes for an especially tedious and bleak viewing experience, offering an almost too cynical view of the world. There are moments that work to lighten up the film, but they're few and far between, leaving The Devil All the Time to sink back into its grim darkness. Altogether, the movie feels overlong and though the performances are wonderfully delivered by the cast, The Devil All the Time offers little other reason for viewers to slog through its over-two-hour runtime.

As a result, The Devil All the Time is worth checking out for those already decided they want to give the Netflix movie a shot. Certainly, fans of Holland and Pattinson - as well as any other member of the cast - will be treated to compelling performances that are worth seeing. And thanks to the accessibility of Netflix, even those unsure on the movie can give it a shot without the commitment of purchasing a ticket and seeing it in a theater; those looking for something new as new movies are still few and far between may also find something to like in The Devil All the Time . But it's by no means a must-see movie and for those uninterested in anything The Devil All the Time has to offer, this is one Netflix movie they can skip. The Devil All the Time may have had all the potential with its talent, source material and themes, but this southern gothic thriller is too grim and tedious to be enjoyable.

Next: The Devil All the Time Movie Trailer

The Devil All the Time is now streaming on Netflix. It is 138 minutes long and rated R for violence, bloody/disturbing images, sexual content, graphic nudity and language throughout.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

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Den of Geek

The Devil All the Time Review: Southern Gothic with a Powerhouse Cast

Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Bill Skarsgard star in this bleak, black tale set in Knockemstiff, Ohio

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Spider-Man, Pennywise, Edward Cullen, The Winter Soldier, and Dudley Dursely are part of the unholy ensemble assembled in The Devil All the Time : a black-as-sin slice of Southern Gothic based on the novel by Donald Ray Pollock. Set between the end of World War II and the Vietnam War, the film presents a sprawling tale of violence and misery passed down through generations. At the center is Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) an essentially decent young man whose father (Bill Skarsgård) had returned from the war traumatized into a religious fervor that leads him to prostrate himself in front of a home-made woodland crucifix every night, fighting, as Arvin says, “The devil all the time.”

He’s our anchor point in a story that plays like a portmanteau of pain as corrupt or doomed characters interlink in the small town of Knockemstiff, Ohio. Antonio Campos ( Afterschool , Simon Killer , Christine ) has done an incredible job of building not just a world but a snapshot of an era, a sunbaked parish of dusty poverty that’s peopled by violent and desperate men. It’s bleak, relentlessly so, but the incredible performances across the board make The Devil All the Time fascinating in a way that becomes almost addictive.

Our narrator is the author Pollock himself, who was born and raised in Knockemstiff (his first book was a collection of short stories named after the town and based on his experiences), and he guides us through the stories of the town character by character, spanning 20 years, beginning with war vet Willard’s (Skarsgård) great romance with waitress Charlotte (Haley Bennett), and later his terrible betrayal of his son. We meet serial killer couple Jason Clarke and Riley Keough, who treat murder as their religion and never get apprehended because of their connection to a corrupt and incompetent cop played by Sebastian Stan.

Campos has said that this is a film about faith and so it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s at its most electric in two narratives surrounding the church and its preachers.

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After an extraordinarily diverse body of work over the last few years– Good Time , The Rover , The Lost City Of Z , The Lighthouse , and most recently Tenet , with The Batman incoming–Robert Pattinson has well and truly proven what an incredibly exciting young actor he is, and as predator preacher Preston Teagardin, he oozes sleaze. Possibly the most terrifying of this collection of killers and cranks, Teagardin wields his power with a reedy voice and a sweaty upper lip, and Pattinson nails his cruel perversions perfectly.

The utter revelation of the movie, however, might be Harry Melling as preacher Roy Lafferty–a small town fanatic who pours living spiders onto his face as part of his sermons, and who catches the eye of pious naif Helen (Mia Wasikowska). Needless to say it ends poorly for both. Melling is best known for playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter franchise but here he is completely unrecognizable as such, nailing the very specific Ohio accent and howling to the God he thinks has forsaken him.

Holland’s Arvin is our center point and one of the very few (male) characters who isn’t larger than life. Holland doesn’t get to play as much as the others then, but he does a fine job of representing the moral compass of the film. He suffers terrible things, and does terrible things, but this is as close to what a good man looks like in Knockemstiff.

The rest of the townsfolk are so ‘Other’ (particularly to a British audience) that they are fascinating to gawk at but difficult to identify with. Just as well, perhaps, since a story with this much horror would be way too much to cope with if told as melodrama. Instead these curios exist outside the law, outside recognizable civilization, and in a hardboiled bubble with an atmosphere entirely of its own. And the atmosphere really is all pervasive. For some this Godless tale of the evil that men do might be just too nihilistic, but that can’t detract from Campos’ meticulous construction of a time and a place, and the powerhouse performances all round. You might not like what you’re watching but it’s almost impossible to look away.

The Devil All the Time is available on Netflix on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Rosie Fletcher

Rosie Fletcher is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Den Of Geek. She’s been an entertainment journalist for more than 15 years previously working at DVD & Blu-ray Review, Digital…

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Netflix’s The Devil All the Time is set in Knockemstiff, Ohio, which is not fictional, although we understandably might assume otherwise. Based on the acclaimed 2011 novel by Daniel Ray Pollock , the film lines up an impressive cast beneath filmmaker Antonio Campos , whose Christine Chubbuck biopic Christine was a hell of a character drama (that almost nobody saw). So will this sprawling Southern Gothic saga knock us stiff or leave us hanging or what?

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The misery begins in Knockemstiff, 1957. Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgard) lives there with his wife Charlotte (Haley Bennett) and boy Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta). In the woods near their humble rented home, Willard put up a “weathered cross,” where he and Arvin can kneel and pray — and where Willard plots to retaliate against the three men who make disparaging comments about their family, which might mean Knockemstiff should be rebranded Clobberthashitouttaem. This is a lesson for the kid, frequently bullied, to “pick your time” for retaliation. The cross is possibly an homage to the one Willard saw in the war, although it was decorated with a crucified American soldier, dripping blood, covered in flies and not dead yet. Willard finished the man off and came home with a haunted look, so maybe the misery began a decade and some earlier, in the South Pacific.

Things in Cold Creek, West Virginia, where Willard grew up, sometimes don’t seem much better. The local preacher, Roy Laferty (Harry Melling), is a pinheaded maniac who dumps live spiders on his face mid-sermon to show how he conquered his fear, and the flock is sure impressed, and if not, they’re sure… something. Roy marries Helen (Mia Wasikowska), who Willard’s mother wanted to pair him with. Roy and Helen have a baby girl who’ll grow up to be Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), raised by Willard’s mom after the parents die horribly. She’ll also raise Arvin from age nine into his teens (Tom Holland) when his parents meet the reaper, but not until after Willard, in a fit of grief and desperation, sacrifices his son’s beloved dog to God. Rough.

Maybe some of this has to do with cancer or God’s perceived will or the pair of serial-killers-slash-sex-weirdos (Riley Keough and Jason Clarke) who call themselves “the bait” and “the shooter” and not just because he has a camera. So it’s the ’60s now, and Arvin and Lenora are tight like blood kin. She visits her mother’s grave and prays, even though she has no memory of the woman, while a brooding Arvin stands nearby, shifting his weight from foot to foot, quietly scoffing at the thought of God ever being kind. The brother of the female killer-slash-sex-weirdo is also a sheriff (Sebastian Stan) investigating the reaper’s work in the area, when he isn’t entangled in the doings of organized crooks.

The successor to the spider preacher dies I think — memory fails, but it’s safe to assume if a character leaves the narrative, it’s due to grim cessation — and the new one arrives in ruffled shirts and Cadillac and he’s Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson) and you can just smell the oil on this f—er. In this world, people are all too familiar with sin and violence and sin and death and sin and sin and God and sin, and in Knockemstiff and Cold Creek, all this stuff coagulates into one steamy swampy pool of abominant iniquity. Someone let me write this region’s tourism brochures!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Devil All the Time consists of some backwoods Deliverance scenery, the airlessness of The Place Beyond the Pines , some shots swiped from Miller’s Crossing , and a general sense of wanting to be a tangled, Paul Thomas Anderson-esque rumination on brutality.

Performance Worth Watching: Pattinson really oozes off with this movie, all sleaze as he chews succulently on the part of the corrupted holy man — who should be cage-matched with Eli “The Boy” Sunday in a slippery deathfight of false-godliness.

Memorable Dialogue: “He’d never win a fistfight, but he could recite the book of Revelation in his sleep.” — the narrator nutshells Preston Teagardin

Sex and Skin: Fair amounts of both, although none of it is at all pleasurable, and it’s pretty much exclusively violent.

Our Take: Well, this movie sure lives up to its god damned name. Murder, beatings, suicide, torture, war crimes — The Devil All the Time has it all. And that’s just the death stuff; we might suffocate on its air of psychotraumatic horror if it took itself seriously, as more than a thin and joyless horror parade of plausibility, because it reminds us that yes, the human creature is capable of plumbing the hoary deeps of perversion and lust and bloodthirst, often for their own ghoulish sakes. The film is almost engrossing in its depiction of crestfallen humanity.

Strange then, how the film nurtures such an odd, almost sneeringly humorous black-comic tone, primarily via Pollock himself, in an ill-advised role as narrator — you can almost hear a matter-of-fact smirk in his voice. Yet the cynical comedy is half-cultivated by Campos, as if he wants to both acknowledge tragedy and laugh at life in all its absurd pointlessness. His ramshackle approach renders the film a willow-legged facsimile of a Coen Brothers production. It bullseyes religion as not only a corrupting force but one that enables the gullible to be devoured by predators, as subtle as an elephant in the cheesecake.

So the overall vibe of this thing is off-key and disquieting, a sprawling epic of brutality populated with an ensemble of talented players handcuffed to gossamer characters with a shade-and-a-half of complexity, tops. The top-billed Holland, known for playing a squeaky-voiced teen Spider-Man, is miscast as a sulky kid carrying a chunk of angry coal in his heart; the film lays out his bloody escape path, but we’re barely convinced, or even cognizant, of his needs, wants or inner life. Stan, Bennett and Wasikowska are afterthoughts, Clarke and Keough are boilerplate godless chaos agents, Skarsgard is angry and angrier, Pattinson and Melling are window dressing. The narrative exists in the contextual gloom of international conflict, World War II’s shadow overlapping with the impending doom of Vietnam — for the people of Knockemstiff and Cold Creek, there’s death here or death overseas and any other option is lost in a cloud of hardship and despair. Pray to Jesus all you want, ’cause you got it coming either way.

Our Call: SKIP IT. With the exception of Pattinson and his thin trail of slug-grease, the pseudo-pretentious The Devil All the Time is kind of a mess, and no fun whatsoever.

Should you stream or skip #TheDevilAllTheTime on @netflix ? #SIOSI #TheDevilAlltheTimeNetflix — Decider (@decider) September 17, 2020

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

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DVD & Streaming

The Devil All the Time

Content caution.

A young man with a bruise on his face looks out a truck window.

In Theaters

Tom Holland as Arvin Russell; Michael Banks Repeta as 9-year-old Arvin Russell; Bill Skarsgård as Willard Russell; Robert Pattinson as Reverend Preston Teagardin; Riley Keough as Sandy Henderson; Jason Clarke as Carl Henderson; Sebastian Stan as Sheriff Lee Bodecker; Eliza Scanlen as Lenora Laferty; Haley Bennett as Charlotte Russell; Mia Wasikowska as Helen Hatton; Harry Melling as Roy Laferty; Douglas Hodge as Leroy Brown; Kristin Griffith as Emma Russell; Pokey LaFarge as Theodore; David Atkinson as Earskell; Donald Ray Pollock as The Narrator

Home Release Date

September 16, 2020
Antonio Campos

Distributor

Movie review.

As a child, Arvin Russell watched his father pray.

The elder Russell, Willard, built a makeshift chapel in the woods out back—nothing more, really, than a cross standing before a fallen tree. But every morning, and every night, Willard would walk back to that cross, that fallen tree, and pray.

“It seemed to his son that his father fought the devil all the time,” the Narrator tells us.

The devil sure needs fighting.

When Willard was a soldier in World War II, he came across a fellow American: Sergeant Miller Jones, according to his dog tags. He had been flayed and crucified, a combat knife stabbed through his feet.

He was still alive.

Sgt. Jones lived just another few seconds, thanks to Willard, but the images were harder to kill. Every time he saw a cross, he remembered the man. And perhaps that shaped—or twisted—Willard’s piety.

When Willard’s beloved wife, Charlotte, lay dying from cancer, Willard prayed like never before. He dragged 9-year-old Arvin to the woods and forced him to pray, too. They kneeled before that homemade cross and screamed those prayers up to the heavens in a show of desperate piety. And if Arvin wasn’t praying fiercely enough or seemed to be distracted, Willard would hit him.

But Willard sensed more was needed. So he took Arvin’s dog and killed it. And then he nailed the dog to the cross.

Willard didn’t teach his son much, perhaps. He didn’t have the time. When Charlotte died despite their fervent prayers, Willard killed himself. Arvin found his father’s body, slumped over the fallen tree and under the crucified dog. But Willard did drive home one important point: That the world is filled with lots of terrible people, and he best remember that.

As Arvin grew, he remembered. And time and again, his father’s warnings proved just right.

In Willard’s and Arvin’s sprawling story—one that stretches across two decades—the devil indeed seems to be everywhere, weaving his black thread through the towns of Knockemstiff, Ohio; and Coal Creek, West Virginia. He’s present on a crooked sheriff in the pay of a local crime lord. In a pastor who seduces young girls. In a serial killer and his wife who lure young strangers to annihilation.

Eight years after Willard’s death, Arvin doesn’t pray anymore. Never felt like it did much good. Everywhere Arvin looks, seems like the devil’s winning.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Devil All the Time is an all-too-fitting title for what we see in this movie. Evil thrives in the film’s small-town climate. But it’s not yet laid a claim on everyone.

Take Emma, Arvin’s grandmother who, after Willard’s death, takes the boy home to live with her, She’s as kind and loving a woman as you’d ever want to meet. And even though she’s at an age where you’d think she could rest for a bit, she takes on the burdens of raising two more children she thought she’d never have to raise.

The second child is a girl named Lenora, whose mother was murdered and whose father is long gone. (Most folks believe her dad killed her mother, and it’s true.) Despite the tragedy in her own past—or perhaps because of it—Lenora grows into a conscientious and pious high schooler who says she’s even forgiven her father, whatever he might’ve done. She spends many afternoons sitting by her mother’s grave, sometimes reading the Bible out loud, imagining that her mom is listening.

And Arvin, he loves both Grandma Emma and Lenora fiercely. The movie shows us just how fierce that love can be … though sometimes in questionable ways.

Spiritual Elements

Faith—often a twisted understanding of faith—lies at the core of many characters’ motivations. Sometimes it pushes folks in a positive direction. But other times … well, we’ll see.

On the positive side of the ledger, let’s start again with Grandma Emma. She’s quite devoted to God. She’s recognized as the best cook in the region, but she insists that she couldn’t fry an egg before she found God. “He was the One who guided her hand and made everything turn out good,” the Narrator tells us.

Lenora’s innocent faith is also nice. Even though her piety makes her the target of school bullies, they don’t stop her from praying and reading the Bible. When it looks as if she might miss church, she frets and says it’d be the first time in her life. She tries to encourage Arvin to have a little faith, too. When Arvin repeats his father’s lesson of how many terrible people there are in the world, she says, “Well, maybe you should try praying for them. Would that hurt none?”

“You’re already praying for all of us,” Arvin snaps. “Not doing you much good.”

Their church is taken over by the young Rev. Preston Teagardin, a man who knows his Bible but uses and twists it for his own ends. At a potluck, he uses an impromptu sermon to shame Grandma Emma for bringing chicken livers (which he “sacrificially” takes all of and eats; Arvin suspects that Teagardin selfishly took the best-tasting dish for himself). And he habitually seduces young girls and women, using faith as a prime tool in that seduction. (With one victim, he suggests that she should take off her clothes as an offering to God—to show “the Lord” every bit of herself to get closer to Him.) And then, when he fears that his lewd trysts might be discovered, he begins speaking on the “delusions” found in the Bible—trying to silence or discredit his theoretical accusers before they even come forward.

A pair of traveling preachers speaks and sings at the church, too. One is wheelchair-bound—the product, it’s whispered, of the guy testing his faith by drinking strychnine or antifreeze. His brother, Roy, preaches about the terrible fears unbelievers will find in hell, then tells the congregation he’s always feared spiders. He then takes a jar of spiders and dumps them on his head as a way of proving God’s saving grace.

We learn later that Roy’s spider-stunt went awry one day: One of the spiders bit him and his head swelled up “as big as a pumpkin.” He figured the Lord was trying to tell him something and locked himself in a closet for weeks. “Maybe the Lord wants you to come out into the light,” his worried wife tells Roy. “I mean, how can you be close to God stuck in there? The Lord don’t like dark places.”

But Roy soon gets what he thinks is a message from God: to kill his wife, believing that the Lord will give him the power to resurrect her. (Roy’s faith, as you might expect, goes unrewarded.)

We’re told that Carl, a serial killer, considers murder a spiritual experience. “Only in the presence of death could he feel the presence of something like God,” the Narrator tells us. Meanwhile, his wife and accomplice, Sandy, worries about the spiritual status of their victims. “You’ve been baptized, right?” she asks one as they drive him to a secluded spot.

We’ve already talked about Willard’s twisted piety. Clearly, religion plays a huge role here, and we’ve not covered it all. We see religious pictures and crosses. We hear lots of Gospel music. And the Narrator and others speculate whether many of the movie’s odd coincidences were, in fact, mere chance or acts of God.

Sexual Content

Married couple Sandy and Carl travel the countryside, looking for “models” to pick up. Sandy and the model have sex (which Carl photographs), after which Carl kills the model and takes more pictures. We see several pictures—some black and white, some negatives—of Sandy and her models in various states of undress and posing for the camera, sometimes in compromising positions. (In several we see Sandy’s breasts; in others we see naked men, including one where the man’s genitals are only partly obscured by the man’s hand.) We also see photos of Sandy cheerfully and sultrily posing with the resulting corpses. In one flashback to a killing, a naked man struggles with Carl: We would see critical body parts had they not been, apparently, shot off.

Preston Teagardin also shows up on screen with his own paramours—mostly high school girls, it would seem. Two encounters involve oral sex, one of which is suggested, while the other is more graphic. Teagardin slowly pulls a shirt up from yet another conquest: We see the girl only from the back and see her bra straps. Teagardin gets one of these girls pregnant. And when the girl tells him about the unwanted pregnancy, Teagardin denies any responsibility and suggests the girl’s delusional. (“How could I be the daddy when all we done is spend time with the Lord?” he says, adding that she should find “some way to get rid of it”.) He also has a profoundly graphic and uncomfortable conversation about sex with a parishioner in the guise of a sort of confession.

Another sexual act (complete with some graphic verbal description of it) takes place between a police officer and a woman in his police car. A high-school guy takes a girl into a school bus in order to have sex. (He unbuckles his belt and is excited to “get off her bloomers.”) A couple of poachers make really lewd comments about Willard’s wife as Willard and 9-year-old Arvin pray. (Willard keeps his son from attacking, saying that their prayer time is the Lord’s time.) School bullies tell Lorena that they’d need to put a bag over her head to have sex with her (and then they put a bag over her head). They also suggest that Lorena and Arvin—who aren’t related by blood but living as brother and sister—are having sex. (They aren’t.)

A girl’s virginity is wryly called “her holy gift” by Teagardin in a sermon. We hear (and see the entrance to) a place of ill-repute. Someone takes a picture of a pretty waitress. People fall in love. We hear people talk about various forms of sex and states of sexual arousal.

Violent Content

We’ve touched on some of the movie’s violence in the sections above: the crucified man, the crucified dog, the sexualized murders, etc. I’ll not repeat those here, but we’ve still got plenty to cover.

A woman is stabbed in the throat with a screwdriver and bleeds out in front of the murderer’s (and our) eyes. We learn the body was found seven years later, buried in the woods. A man is shot several times in a church, dying in his own blood. Several other people are shot and killed; sometimes, the blood splashes across walls and curtains and windows. Sometimes it just seeps out of the wound, turning white clothing red. Someone contemplates suicide, tying a rope around her neck. She changes her mind, but accidentally kicks the bucket out from under her feet and strangles to death anyway. Willard kills himself with a knife.

Willard believes in getting even with folks—but only on his own terms. After he hears the poachers making lewd comments about his wife, he finds an opportunity to beat them horrifically. He punches one in the face until his knuckles bleed profusely, then pushes the man’s face into the mud until onlookers are worried that Willard will kill him. He goes over to another man (who’s trying to hide in a car), smashes a window with a rifle butt, then clubs the man several times with that butt.

We’re told that Arvin would later “think on this day as the best one he ever spent with his father,” and he took those violent lessons to heart. He doles out his own share of beatings—brutalizing a trio of bullies (including slamming a car hood down on one) until his own knuckles bleed. He forces bags over their own heads (just as they did with his sister) and threatens to kill them if they ever bully Lorena again.

A woman is found lying on the floor after collapsing due to the cancer in her. Arvin comes home with a black eye from school. (Willard exhorts Arvin to finish his fights and make sure they regret ever hitting him.) He fights as a teen, too: Lorena spots him with blood coming out of his nose, and we witness him savagely attacked by a trio of instigators—punching him in the face and kicking him in the belly.

Corpses are seen, sometimes left to rot and with flies buzzing all around. We see mangled bodies in photos (often negatives, which does help to blunt the impact a bit). We hear that one of Sandy and Carl’s victims was chopped up and stuffed in a suitcase. Sandy complains that she doesn’t like it when their victims’ cry. Carl insists that “tears make for a good photograph.”

Crude or Profane Language

About 35 f-words and nearly 30 s-words. We hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n” and “h—” as well. God’s name is misused about 13 times, most of those with the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused five times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

A sheriff drinks quite a bit, often on the job. We’re told the coroner is “a drunk,” too. Sandy and Carl encourage their victims to drink alcohol (thus lowering both their inhibitions and their ability to fight back). Charlotte is dying from cancer, but the doctor says the morphine will make her more comfortable.

Other Negative Elements

Yes, there’s more!

Someone vomits. Someone else urinates by a lake. (His back is turned to the camera.)

Lee Bodecker, the sheriff of Knockemstiff, is as dirty as lawmen come. He meets frequently with the local crime boss to receive payouts and looks the other way regarding the man’s dirty dealings. He’s the older brother to Sandy, the serial-killer wife, too. At first he thinks she’s merely promiscuous and tells her to chill out while he’s running for re-election. But when Bodecker realizes what else Sandy’s done, he tries to cover it up in any way possible—again, to protect his re-election.

The Devil All the Time is based on a 2011 book of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock. And from what I gather, Netflix might’ve ratcheted back the content a bit.

But, as you can surely tell by now, this two-and-a-half-hour movie still has plenty of it for those who, like Carl and Sandy, have a hankering for sex and blood.

The movie has plenty of spirituality, too. Indeed, it seems like it’s one of the movie’s prime movers. And it asks some provocative questions, to be sure. It practically insists we take stock of the story and think about just what divine or demonic hands might be at work there.

At the beginning of the story, the Narrator asks us to ponder just that question—asking why so many people from two small towns would be so intricately interlinked. “Some would claim it was just dumb luck, while others might swear it was God’s intention.” The truth, the Narrator suggests might be a bit of both.

But how we answer leads to other, even more uncomfortable questions, and frankly, this review is long enough as it is.

The Devil All the Time is not completely devoid of merit, both aesthetically and spiritually. But it’s terribly twisted and polluted by the movie’s unrelenting and gratuitous content.

Some movies entertain. Some movies educate. But this movie punishes the viewer. It serves up humanity’s worst inclinations and then forces you to watch them all—pounding them into your head with the force of a rifle butt.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The devil all the time, common sense media reviewers.

Gripping drama has disturbing violence, sex, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Families love and care for each other in different

Arvin's grandparents provide a loving home when hi

Extreme violence throughout includes war scenes, t

A local bar has sex workers. A teen boy and girl a

"S--t," "f--k," "bulls--t," "ass," "godforsaken,"

Some car makes. Actual town names in West Virginia

A soldier drinks to celebrate coming home from war

Positive Messages

Families love and care for each other in different ways, pass down values and traditions from generation to generation -- for better and for worse. Religious faith can help people through hard times, though film suggests it can also breed superstitious behavior, belief in false prophets, terrible choices, and actions with sometimes fatal consequences.

Positive Role Models

Arvin's grandparents provide a loving home when his parents die and do the same for an orphaned girl. Arvin's deep need to protect his stepsister leads him to extreme violence, just as his father had taught him to do when the father beat up men who had threatened his wife. A man and a woman lure innocent hitchhikers into their car to kill them, but the woman seems to feel increasingly guilty about their crimes. Politicians and priests are depicted as corrupt in different ways.

Violence & Scariness

Extreme violence throughout includes war scenes, two suicides, more than a dozen people killed in variety of ways shown in graphic detail (mostly shooting and stabbing). Characters maim or kill for different reasons: out of a misguided religious faith (as a sacrifice, or to attempt a resurrection), to teach their kids a lesson, to protect or avenge loved ones, as self-defense, for personal pleasure, or to avoid being exposed as corrupt. Two serial killers lure in young men with sex, then photograph them dead or dying. A man kills a dog as a sacrifice to God to save his dying wife.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A local bar has sex workers. A teen boy and girl are fooling around in a school bus; he's about to take off his pants before they're interrupted. Teen boys chase and tease a female classmate, talking about "hard-ons." A woman pleasures a man in his car so that he ejaculates into a cup. A priest convinces teenage girls to take off their clothes, engage in sexual acts with him, which we see from inside or outside his car (undressing and positions suggested) or from outside his window (a woman performing oral sex). A man who has watched the priest describes the acts in detail. A man and woman lure young hitchhikers to have sex with the woman (the man commands one to "f--k" his wife) so that the man can photograph and kill them; we see these acts in a detailed series of underexposed photos that show some sexual positions and nudity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"S--t," "f--k," "bulls--t," "ass," "godforsaken," "hell," "sons of bitches," "goddamnit," "pimping," "whore."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Some car makes. Actual town names in West Virginia and Ohio. Soundtrack.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A soldier drinks to celebrate coming home from war. The same man later drinks by himself at a bar as his wife dies of cancer. People discuss a man who "got sober" and another who is a "drunk." A serial killing couple drink liquor straight from a bottle with one of their victims.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Devil All the Time is an extremely graphic film with disturbing scenes of violence and sex. It offers a largely negative portrayal of religious faith, including a priest who convinces devout teenage girls to have sex with him, a proselytizer who stabs his wife because he thinks he can resurrect her, and a man who kills a dog as a sacrifice to God to save his dying wife. Adapted from a novel, the film depicts rural areas in the 1950s and 1960s as dens of poverty, depravity, corruption, and ignorance. There are war scenes, two suicides, and more than a dozen people killed in a variety of ways shown in graphic detail. Characters maim or kill to teach their kids a lesson, to protect or avenge loved ones, as self-defense, for personal pleasure, or to avoid being exposed as corrupt. A man and a woman are serial killers who lure young men in with sex and then photograph them dead or dying. A series of underexposed photos show the woman in various positions with her victims. Other sex scenes are less graphic in terms of what's shown on-screen, but not in terms of what we understand to be happening, including a woman pleasuring a man in a car, another performing oral sex on the priest, a bar that has rooms in the back with sex workers, two teens about to have sex on a school bus, and teen boys chasing a girl and talking about "hard-ons." Language includes various forms of "s--t" and "f--k" as well as "ass," "hell," "bitch," "damn," "pimp," and "whore." There's also some drinking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (5)
Kids say (34)

Based on 5 parent reviews

Very great but not recommended for younger or innocent teens and childrenit

Very good. not for kids under 15, what's the story.

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME weaves together several families' stories over a decade in two small towns in West Virginia and Ohio. In one family, the son, Willard (Bill Skarsgård), is just back from war in 1957. His mother (Kristin Griffith) made a pact with God to marry him off to a local woman, Helen ( Mia Wasikowska ), if he came back alive, but Willard has his eye on a waitress he's met (Haley Bennett). He marries the waitress and they have a son, Arvin, but she dies of cancer when the boy is still young, and Willard takes his own life soon after. Arvin ( Tom Holland ) is sent to live with his grandmother, who has also taken in Helen's daughter, Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), as Helen and her husband, Roy (Harry Melling), have both gone missing. Lenora grows up to be a devout Christian, picked on by local boys and easy prey for an immoral priest. Arvin's family doesn't know yet that Helen and Roy are both dead. Roy's path has intersected with serial killers Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy ( Riley Keough ). The killers get away with murder for years, even though Sandy's brother, Lee ( Sebastian Stan ), is the local sheriff. Lee knows the only thing that separates him from all the other sinners is that he's the law.

Is It Any Good?

As much as you want to be repelled by the depraved characters and relentless violence, this film manages to keep you curious. Maybe more impressively, The Devil All the Time makes you care for some of the broken souls inhabiting its two map-speck towns. This is no easy feat. The well-known international cast pulls off playing evil while hinting at the weaknesses and trauma fueling their characters' actions, forcing you to grapple with comprehending characters even as they make appalling, morally questionable choices. At well over two hours long, the film could have done this even better by cutting out a couple of the less-developed stories -- for example, the corrupt sheriff's dealings with a mistress and local crime bosses.

Director Antonio Campos seems fascinated by the darkest side of human nature, but he has set the film to a blend of period gospel, folk, country, and other music that keeps the mood from feeling as miserable as the stories warrant. Adapted from the novel (often labeled "hillbilly gothic") by Donald Ray Pollock, who narrates the film, Devil is set in the gloomy borderlands between West Virginia and Ohio between 1957 and 1965. This location and between-war period is characterized in the film by financial and spiritual poverty. Still, there are no easy moral lessons here, no heroes, and few characters or themes painted in black and white. It won't be for everyone, but given a chance, Devil could surprise more than a few initially reluctant viewers.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about whether any of the characters in The Devil All the Time are sympathetic . If so, which ones, and why?

How is religious faith portrayed in this film? Does the portrayal differ from your own experience of church or religion?

Have you read the novel this film is based on or any other work by the author, Donald Ray Pollock? How does his writing compare with the film?

Did the setting of this film remind you of others you've seen? Which ones?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : September 16, 2020
Cast : Robert Pattinson , Tom Holland , Bill Skarsgård
Director : Antonio Campos
Inclusion Information : Latino directors
Studio : Borderline Films
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 139 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence, bloody/disturbing images, sexual content, graphic nudity, and language throughout
Last updated : February 18, 2023

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The Devil All the Time Review: A Twisted and Gruesome Backwoods Thriller

Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson are unrecognizable in the truly disturbing, The Devil All the Time.

The Devil All the Time is a dark and twisted backwoods thriller with a sensational ensemble cast. The film is an adaptation of the novel by Donald Ray Pollock, who pulls double duty as narrator. The plot follows several disparate characters over three time periods between two rural towns, Knockemstiff, Ohio (an actual place), and Coal Creek, West Virginia. Religion is the constant theme in a sanguinary stew of murders, suicides, and sexual predation. Graphic violence is sprinkled throughout to mitigate the long runtime. The film had my attention rapt until a somewhat predictable climax.

The Devil All the Time opens in 1957 Knockemstiff with Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård) chastising his nine-year-old son, Alvin (Michael Banks Repeta). The boy has become a target of bullies. Willard forces Alvin to pray before a makeshift cross in the woods. The story flashes back to a gruesome World War II event that deeply troubled Willard. He meets Alvin's mother, Charlotte (Haley Bennett), at a diner on his way home to Coal Creek. During this same period, Sandy (Riley Keough), a bartender who sidelines as a hooker, meets Carl (Jason Clarke), a photographer with an evil fetish.

In 1965, a teenaged Alvin ( Tom Holland ), lives with his devout grandmother and uncle in Coal Creek after a series of tragedies years earlier. Alvin protects and cherishes Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), a pious girl who was raised by his grandmother. Her parents vanished mysteriously when she was an infant. Lenora is transfixed by the handsome new preacher assigned to their church. Reverend Preston Teagardin ( Robert Pattinson ) uses scripture as a weapon for pedophilia.

Meanwhile in Knockemstiff, Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan), the corrupt sheriff and Sandy's older brother, is worried about the upcoming election. The locals are beginning to frown at the town's brothel. It's recalcitrant owner (Douglas Hodge) has cut his payoffs. And another dead hitchhiker has been found in the Ohio woods.

The Devil All the Time connects the characters and towns while swaying from one brutal event to another. There are scenes that are stomach churning. Not all of them are violent, the reverend's car rides with Lenora and the girls in his flock are difficult to watch. Robert Pattinson is a spectacular scumbag, but nowhere near the most depraved. Jason Clarke and Riley Keough's photography escapades are beyond sadistic. Their murderous rampage is the most villainous in a film loaded with abhorrent, deviant behavior.

Director Antonio Campos ( Martha Marcy May Marlene ) does an excellent job threading the different storylines together . This is done through clever editing and deft use of voice over narration. Alvin flashes back continuously to a defining day with his father. These pivotal scenes explain his actions as he deals with unexpected conflicts. Donald Ray Pollock has as much dialogue as the players. This level of narration is usually a crutch for a weak script, but not here. Pollock's commentary, sometimes in disgust, is insightful. He's the voice of reason and normalcy that centers the film.

Tom Holland takes a dramatic leap as an actor. He proves his mettle in a truly disturbing film. Spider-Man fans would find Alvin Russell unrecognizable. The Devil All the Time is strictly meant for mature audiences. There are scenes of animal cruelty that will traumatize children. The Devil All the Time is produced by Nine Stories Productions and Bronx Moving Company. It will be released September 16th globally on Netflix .

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Home Articles TV The Devil All the Time: Quick No-Spoiler Review

The Devil All the Time: Quick No-Spoiler Review

By shannon entin.

Published 4 years ago

The Devil All the Time offers an incredible cast, excellent performances, and a dark, sad story. The movie follows loosely-entwined characters in the rural “sticks” of Southern Ohio and West Virginia. It takes place in the late 1940s to 1960s. The story focuses mainly on Arvin Russell who, as a young boy and a young man, experiences violence, tragedy, and backwoods corruption.

The Devil All the Time was released in September 2020 and is now streaming on Netflix. It’s run time is 2 hours and 18 minutes and it’s rated R. It’s based on the 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock, and the author himself narrates the film.

No-Spoiler Review of The Devil All the Time

The Internet classifies this movie as a mystery and psychological thriller, though there isn’t a lot that you need to unravel or piece together. I found it to be fairly predictable, but not in a bad way. It was fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat viewing that I thoroughly enjoyed. There were many times in the movie where I said, “I know what’s going to happen,” and as soon as I had myself tensed up into a ball to prepare for it – BAM – it happened.

The story moves along with excellent pacing, covering multiple generations over the course of 20 years. There are three story lines that weave together superficially, but satisfyingly. This is the type of movie where they switch back and forth between three story lines and weave in past and present. But there was nothing super complex about it and it was all easy enough to follow.

This is a dark, intense movie. There are literally no happy moments. But it wasn’t scary and it wasn’t horror – which I felt the trailer hinted at. The Devil All the Time is just a sad, tragic story of a young boy and the sinister people he had the misfortune of interacting with.

Is The Devil All the Time ok for kids? Hell no. This movie is a solid R for it’s bloody violence, overall intensity, and, to a lesser extent, language and sexual content. There’s also some disturbing animal violence.

The Devil All the Time Cast

The standout performance in this movie is without a doubt Tom Holland as Arvin Russell. We’re used to seeing Tom as the adorable Spider-Man, and this role is a complete 180. His performance was gritty and emotional and he was the best part of the movie.

Robert Pattinson was a thrill in his role as Preacher Teagardin. He is simultaneously a snotty brat, a power-tripping preacher, and manipulative sleaze. He was fun to watch, though at times he seemed almost a parody of his character, so I don’t know that I’d classify his acting as outstanding. And his voice drove me crazy. It was high-pitched and I wondered if he might have been struggling with the southern drawl accent. Or maybe it was intentional – another layer of his character to make us feel uncomfortable.

Bill Skarsgård, who plays Arvin’s father Willard, is always incredible and this was no exception. He portrays the desperation of a man losing his wife with perfection.

Another big name in this movie is Sebastian Stan, who plays lawman Lee Bodecker. I did not even recognize him for the first half of the movie with his short hair and just a little more weight on him than Bucky Barnes. He looked, well… old in this movie and I didn’t like it. My personal feelings about his looks aside, he did a great job in his role. And though he didn’t have a ton of screen time, he did deliver one of the film’s best lines, “Some people were born just so they can be buried.”

Eliza Scanlen’s performance is solid as the lonely and vulnerable Lenora, Arvin’s non-biological sister who gets wrapped up with the sinister preacherman. You might know Scanlen from her role as Amma in Sharp Objects.

Riley Keough (who – fun fact! – is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley) plays Sandy, an increasingly reluctant accomplice to her serial-killer husband (Jason Clarke). I enjoyed her performance immensely and hope to see her in more.

Overall, I give The Devil All the Time a B+. It’s definitely worth the watch for the cast and acting alone.

If you liked The Devil All the Time , I recommend you check out Castle Rock on Hulu.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, kingdom of the planet of the apes.

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When Rupert Wyatt's 2011 prequel " Rise of the Planet of the Apes " revived a five-decade-old franchise—one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the '60s—it did so with a refreshing commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny.

Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture technology by Andy Serkis (delivering the kind of actorly nuance that shouldn’t have been overlooked by The Academy), the film’s Ape protagonist Caesar has led that story through the two sequels, both of them elegantly directed by Matt Reeves —2014’s “ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ” and 2017’s “ War for the Planet of the Apes .” Raised by James Franco ’s caring human hands in the first film, Caesar quickly broke through the classist and discriminatory human world’s self-destructive greed in the trilogy and claimed his deserving place as the leader of his kind, while a manmade virus made Apes smarter, and robbed humans of their intelligence and speech abilities, nearly eradicating mankind.

As a whole, the trilogy became perhaps the finest franchise of this century, standing tall against the loud, bloated mega-verses and unexpectedly reminding us what we want from big-budget, sequel-minded Hollywood: something thoughtful, entertaining and insightful about who we are and aspire to be. The new film, “ The Maze Runner ” director Wes Ball ’s brilliant “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” walks securely in the footsteps of this recent legacy, wearing the Caesar-centric films’ values like fairness, loyalty and communal solidarity on its sleeve with pride.

Like its predecessors, Ball’s sequel knows these principles don’t belong to humans exclusively—not in his highly imaginative sci-fi adventure, not in the real world where the animal kingdom lives by its own set of rules and ethics. And along with his screenwriter Josh Friedman (of the wonderful “ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” with which you will notice plenty of visual and thematic parallels here), Ball confidently puts forth a film that is exciting and visually articulate in its action setpieces as it is thoughtfully coherent in its plotting. In “Kingdom,” there is not a single wasted idea or scene that feels randomly introduced without a soundly rewarding payoff that deepens and completes story. In other words, here’s a film—well, a franchise—where you see smart writers and filmmakers at work towards bringing things full circle, not meeting rooms dedicated to soulless fan-servicing.

The tale of “Kingdom” is set generations after the events of the “ War ,” after the time of Caesar. Young chimpanzees Noa ( Owen Teague ), Anaya ( Travis Jeffery ), and Soona ( Lydia Peckham ) of the Eagle Clan—all also portrayed via performance capture—climb massive heights at the start of the film so that Noa can find an eagle egg of his own per his clan’s rituals and bond with the majestic bird over the years like the elderly of his world. After a beautifully shot, eventful escapade nearly costing him his life, the fearless Noa manages to claim his egg from a nest.

But when a mysterious human— Freya Allan ’s feral and mercurial Mae—who is tailing him accidentally breaks it, Noa sets off to find a new one, unintentionally making his peaceful home base a target of the villainous masked apes led by Proximus Caesar ( Kevin Durand ). Twisting Caesar’s dignified teachings and wise words like “Apes Together Strong” and building an army to one day possess the secrets to the technology humans have left behind generations ago, Proximus destroys Noa’s village, kills his father, and hunts down Mae in his quest. Throughout these nail-biter cat-and-mouse sequences, immersive cinematographer Gyula Pados ’ camerawork is impressive and spine-tinglingly exciting, crafting large-scaled action that is heart-poundingly tense, and more logically constructed than what we often see these days.

After a lovely interlude when Noa meets a lonesome orangutan and learns about the real Caesar as a strong, moral, and compassionate leader, the young ape and Mae find themselves in Proximus’ captivity along with other enslaved members of the Eagle Clan, including Noa’s aforementioned buddies. At a windswept and ocean-battered base next to a locked vault that humans have evacuated, there is also William H. Macy ’s Trevathan, an intelligent, Vonnegut-reading human tasked to teach Proximus everything he knows about the human ways. Daniel T. Dorrance ’s production design truly sings in these segments with the level of detail draped across the “ Waterworld ”-like ape settlement and the vault, once we finally get inside (albeit, perhaps a bit conveniently).

Gradually and throughout a stunning third act where the “Kingdom” unleashes some truly stunning “The Way of Water”-style visuals, the film plants the seeds of even further chapters to come, renewing its thematic queries around whether inter-species peace could ever be achieved. But perhaps more importantly, the pronouncedly anti-gun and anti-violence “Kingdom” explores the concerns and catastrophes of the modern world smartly and thoughtfully within its construct. Are there times that necessitate the abandonment of pacificism? (There is especially one shocking scene involving Mae that ponders this question that a lesser toothless film would be too afraid to ask.) Are we learning the right lessons from our past, if we’re learning anything at all? Why the hell can’t we all get along?

To be clear, “Kingdom” doesn’t have the answers. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this rare, deeply cinematic Hollywood franchise won’t stop digging until we get a little closer to knowing.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes movie poster

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Rated PG-13

145 minutes

Owen Teague as Noa

Freya Allan as Nova / Mae

Kevin Durand as Proximus Caesar

Peter Macon as Raka

William H. Macy as Trevathan

Josh Friedman

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Horror movie ‘Late Night With the Devil’ earns eerie amount at box office, Variety reports

(NEXSTAR) – In an eerie twist that’s sure to please the publicity team behind “Late Night With the Devil,” the new horror movie earned $666,666 at the box office on Sunday, Variety reported.

The film, which hit theaters March 22, earned a total of $2.8 million during its entire opening weekend. In doing so, it also gave IFC Films its biggest opening weekend ever, shattering the previous record of $826,775 earned during the opening of 2022’s “Watcher” despite debuting on roughly the same number of screens, according to Variety .

It’s worth nothing that Box Office Mojo, an online resource for box-office data, did not yet account for Sunday’s earnings for “Late Night With the Devil” on its site as of Monday. ( Deadline published estimates that the film earned slightly more than Variety reported — $733,000 on Sunday — though representatives for IFC Films were not immediately available to confirm the box-office tally for Nexstar.)

The found footage-style horror film stars David Dastmalchian (“The Suicide Squad,” “Oppenheimer”) as Jack Delroy, the host of a fictional 1970s talk show.

“However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack’s beloved wife,” reads a plot description at the film’s official site. “Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other — unaware he is about to unleash evil into the living rooms of America.”

As of Monday morning, the movie had earned favorable “certified fresh” rating of 97% at Rotten Tomatoes. The film fared slightly worse by the standards at MetaCritic, with a score of 72 (which still indicated “generally favorable” reviews from critics).

“Late Night With the Devil” opened sixth at the box office over the weekend behind “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire ($45 million), “Dune: Part Two ($18 million), “Kung Fu Panda 4” ($17 million), “Immaculate” ($5.4 million) and “Arthur the King” ($4.4 million), per IMDb.

Still, Scott Shooman the head of the AMC Film Group — the parent company of IFC Films — told Deadline that the opening numbers for “Late Night With the Devil” were encouraging.

“’Late Night With The Devil’ continues to showcase that there is still potential for highly reviewed, intelligent auteur films in movie theaters across all genres,” Shooman said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to PIX11.

Horror movie ‘Late Night With the Devil’ earns eerie amount at box office, Variety reports

1 hr 14 min

Late Night with the Devil (2024‪)‬ Fun With Horror - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

Film Reviews

This episode, Andrew and Scotty take a time machine to the 70s to host a late night TV show as they discuss "Late Night with the Devil". They also read a couple of new reviews, Andrew talks about a new board game he bought, and of course, stay tuned until the end to hear what Andrew chose for their next episode! "Late Night with the Devil" was written and directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes. It stars David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, a late night TV show host in the 70s who, as a last ditch effort to raise his ratings, invites onto the show a young girl who is seemingly possessed by a demon. Follow us on social media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/396586601815924 Twitter - https://twitter.com/funwhorror Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/fun_with_horror_podcast/ FWH + Fangoria collab: For 20% off at the Fango Shop, just enter FUN_WITH_HORROR_PODCAST at checkout!

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The Devil All the Time movie review (2020)
It works for me. "The Devil All the Time" is a stark collection of vignettes about violence and religion in the heart of the country. It is vicious and cruel in ways that will turn off a lot of viewers. I found Campos' skill with ensemble and willingness to dig into the darkest aspects of the human condition dramatically rewarding enough ...
The Devil All the Time
Mar 1, 2024 Full Review Serena Seghedoni Loud and Clear Reviews Tom Holland and an all-star cast shine in The Devil All The Time, a midwestern gothic crime drama whose well-crafted, meaningful ...
'The Devil All the Time' Review: Down-Home Livin' and Dyin'
The Devil All the Time. Directed by Antonio Campos. Crime, Drama, Thriller. R. 2h 18m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an ...
The Devil All the Time review
The same could be said of The Devil All the Time, a similarly genre-bending tale of twisted faith and postwar trauma, adapted from Donald Ray Pollock's 2011 novel, which drew comparisons with ...
The Devil All the Time
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 2, 2022. Keith Garlington Keith & the Movies. "The Devil all the Time" is a cold and relentless tale of human depravity with hardly a glimmer of light ...
Devil All the Time Review: Netflix Drama Stars Tom Holland ...
'The Devil All the Time' Review: Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in a Netflix Drama of Small-Town Sin It's hard to imagine how a movie with this much sordid crime and violence could be this rote.
The Devil All the Time
Summary In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters — an unholy preacher (Robert Pattinson), twisted couple (Jason Clarke and Riley Keough), and crooked sheriff (Sebastian Stan) — converge around young Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family. Crime.
The Devil All the Time (2020)
The Devil All the Time: Directed by Antonio Campos. With Bill Skarsgård, Tom Holland, Banks Repeta, Emilio Subercaseaux Campos. Sinister characters converge around a young man devoted to protecting those he loves in a postwar backwoods town teeming with corruption and brutality.
'The Devil All the Time' Review
Donald Ray Pollock's violent novel 'The Devil All the Time' comes to Netflix courtesy of director/co-writer Antonio Campos and with Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Riley Keough in starring roles.
'The Devil All the Time': A Southern Gothic-Lite, All Tied Up in Knots
It's also, it turns out, a real place in Ohio — and the hometown of author Donald Ray Pollock, whose 2011 novel The Devil All the Time the filmmaker Antonio Campos has adapted into a movie ...
Everyone's A Sinner In 'The Devil All The Time'
'The Devil All The Time' Review: Everyone's A Sinner In Unnerving Film The Netflix adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock's novel is grim in ways that can be both exciting and wearying: so many twists ...
The Devil All The Time
The Devil All The Time First Reviews: Tom Holland Is "Heartbreaking" In This Violent, Literary Crime Saga Antonio Campos' adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock's novel might have been better as a miniseries, say critics, but the star-studded ensemble - especially Holland and Robert Pattinson - make this dark tale worth a watch.
The Devil All The Time Review
Published on 11 09 2020. Release Date: 16 Sep 2020. Original Title: The Devil All The Time. It was bound to happen. At some point in his career, Tom Holland was gonna grow up and go properly dark ...
The Devil All the Time (2020) Movie Review
By Molly Freeman. Published Sep 15, 2020. The Devil All the Time is a slow, sprawling thriller, unfurling with creeping tension, but the cast's performances are more rewarding than the story. In The Devil All the Time, it would seem that director Antonio Campos had assembled all the makings of a great film: A wildly talented, if not necessarily ...
The Devil All the Time review
T his gruesome, violent, backwoods-gothic noir is directed by Antonio Campos (known for his more intimate chillers such as Afterschool and Christine) and adapted from the 2011 novel by Donald Ray ...
The Devil All the Time Review: Southern Gothic with a Powerhouse Cast
Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Bill Skarsgard star in this bleak, black tale set in Knockemstiff, Ohio. Spider-Man, Pennywise, Edward Cullen, The Winter Soldier, and Dudley Dursely are part of ...
'The Devil All the Time' Netflix Review: Stream It or Skip It?
The top-billed Holland, known for playing a squeaky-voiced teen Spider-Man, is miscast as a sulky kid carrying a chunk of angry coal in his heart; the film lays out his bloody escape path, but we ...
The Devil All the Time
The Devil All the Time is based on a 2011 book of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock. And from what I gather, Netflix might've ratcheted back the content a bit. But, as you can surely tell by now, this two-and-a-half-hour movie still has plenty of it for those who, like Carl and Sandy, have a hankering for sex and blood.
The Devil All the Time Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 5 ): Kids say ( 34 ): As much as you want to be repelled by the depraved characters and relentless violence, this film manages to keep you curious. Maybe more impressively, The Devil All the Time makes you care for some of the broken souls inhabiting its two map-speck towns. This is no easy feat.
The Devil All The Time (2020)
Thriller may be a bit of a stretch, given the slow-burn 130 minute run-time, but the movie certainly packs in some tense and dramatic peaks along the way. Trying to explain The Devil All The Time's plot without giving away key parts of the story is a tricky beast to tame.
'The Devil All the Time' review: Tom Holland and Robert ...
The casting alone should spur interest in "The Devil All the Time" - Batman (Robert Pattinson) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), together at last - but can't make the movie feel like less of ...
The Devil All the Time Review: A Twisted and Gruesome ...
The Devil All the Time is a dark and twisted backwoods thriller with a sensational ensemble cast. The film is an adaptation of the novel by Donald Ray Pollock, who pulls double duty as narrator ...
The Devil All the Time: Quick No-Spoiler Review
The Devil All the Time: Quick No-Spoiler Review. The Devil All the Time offers an incredible cast, excellent performances, and a dark, sad story. The movie follows loosely-entwined characters in the rural "sticks" of Southern Ohio and West Virginia. It takes place in the late 1940s to 1960s. The story focuses mainly on Arvin Russell who, as ...
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes movie review (2024)
When Rupert Wyatt's 2011 prequel "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" revived a five-decade-old franchise—one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the '60s—it did so with a refreshing commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny.Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture technology by Andy Serkis (delivering ...
Horror movie 'Late Night With the Devil' earns eerie amount ...
The film, which hit theaters March 22, earned a total of $2.8 million during its entire opening weekend. In doing so, it also gave IFC Films its biggest opening weekend ever, shattering the ...
‎Fun With Horror
This episode, Andrew and Scotty take a time machine to the 70s to host a late night TV show as they discuss "Late Night with the Devil". They also read a couple of new reviews, Andrew talks about a new board game he bought, and of course, stay tuned until the end to hear what Andrew chose for their next episode!

‘The Devil All the Time’ Review: Down-Home Livin’ and Dyin’

‘The Devil All the Time’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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‘The Devil All the Time’ Review: Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in a Netflix Drama of Small-Town Sin

Owen Gleiberman

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Reviewed online, Sept. 10, 2020. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 138 MIN.

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Movie Reviews

Everyone's A Sinner In 'The Devil All The Time'

Author Interviews

The Devil All The Time First Reviews: Tom Holland Is "Heartbreaking" In This Violent, Literary Crime Saga

Does the movie do justice to the book?

Is the movie – like the book – very, very violent?

What would y ou compare the movie to?

How is author Donald Ray Pollock as a narrator?

What about the killer on-screen ensemble cast?

How is Tom Holland?

And what about Robert Pattinson?

Any other standout performances?

Are there any other positive elements?

Is it too much movie?

Is the timing right for The Devil All the Time ?

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The Devil All the Time Review: Southern Gothic with a Powerhouse Cast

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The Devil All the Time

In Theaters