Hellfire evangelicalism runs deep in Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time, a Netflix original adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s novel of the same name. An Appalachian Gothic, it carries the aftertaste of a Coen Brothers film through its poetic dialogue and tangled narrative.
From the start, the plot makes its point: This is a movie about shame, specifically the way in which religion breeds shame, carrying on through generations by way of cyclical violence.
Grim, brooding and tragic, the film leans on strong performances but often fails to develop its characters past the traumas they've endured. At moments it veers on poverty porn.
For those planning to watch for Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, be warned that neither show up until about a third of the way through the film. The first chunk is pure exposition.
It starts with Willard Russell, played by Bill Skarsgård (reminiscent of a young Steve Buscemi), a soldier fresh from the battlefields of World War II. What was meant to merely be a stop at a cafe becomes a marriage when he meets waitress Charlotte (Haley Bennett). The pair move to Knockemstiff, Ohio and have a son, Arvin.
A narrator — voiced by Pollock himself — reveals that Willard’s mother, Emma (Kristin Griffith), prayed fervently for her son to marry a woman named Helen (Mia Wasikowska), who has a tragic backstory of her own. Emma believed that something wretched would happen if the two didn’t wed. Indeed, much bloodshed and heartache follow. But the reasoning lies not in a supernatural curse or a vengeful heavenly father but in the inheritance of shame, guilt, emotional repression and grief. The brand of evangelicalism these characters navigate preaches the idea that if you just pray hard enough, glory will be delivered to you and your offspring; and perhaps anything horrible that happens is due to one’s own lack of faith and sinful nature.
As Pattinson’s character spouts in a deranged Southern drawl: “DELUSIONS!”
The story cuts to 1965. Arvin (Holland) is now a teenager living with his grandmother and great uncle (David Atkinson) alongside Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), the daughter of Helen and preacher Roy Laferty (Harry Melling); she was taken in by Emma.
Laferty, though fleeting in the plot’s grand scheme, is smarmy, unhinged and, well, delusional. Encroaching on Fear Factor territory, in one scene he pours a jar of spiders on himself, believing his faith will protect him. Wasikowska is compelling in her role as Helen, but like many of the women in The Devil All the Time, isn’t afforded much agency. That’s a loss, too, because much about these women’s experiences could have been explored.
If Laferty is unsettling as a pastor hungry for God-given protection, Pattinson’s Reverend Preston Teagardin is flat out disturbing as one who wields power dynamics to manipulate and abuse young women. Despite the movie also throwing in Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque serial killers (played by Riley Keough and Jason Clarke), the Reverend feels to be evil incarnate.
Time and time again, the characters of the present repeat the pain of the past. Arvin particularly bottles his father’s grief and channels it just like his old man taught him years before — through vigilantism. Holland deftly embodies Arvin as a teenage skeptic who’s hardened by loss. It’s a role that stands in stark contrast to the goofy Spider-Man he’s known for.
The commentary on life’s cyclical nature is mostly spelled out. Arvin asks himself, as voiced by the narrator, if they’re “going backwards or forwards.” Beyond the individual, history repeats itself, too. Just as the film opens at the end of WWII, it bows out as the Vietnam War rumbles to life.
Pollock’s narration, though sometimes distracting, lends a folkloric air to the film’s Gothic atmosphere. Despite its title, The Devil All the Time is atheistic in its approach.
Levity isn’t anywhere to be found as the characters writhe against a rusted Bible Belt sure to damn them — not because God (or the Devil) is real but because they believe they must suffer for him.