Starring Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan. Directed by Antonio Campos.
One of the brilliant things that Netflix can bring to the world is a stream of films that follow their director’s visions. In this case, this means a twisting, epic crime drama.
The Devil All The Time is a story of many narratives twisting and connecting, following the life of a young man in the shadow of his war-hero father and mother, a deadly couple, corrupt cops, religious zealots and a perverted preacher.
Director Antonio Campos, known for the fantastic Christine, attempts to wrangle a slow-burning dark thriller that follows disparate narratives, and it’s a tough battle for him. It feels like the adaptation of a novel, and the narration from original novel writer Donald Ray Pollock adds to this problem. Campos, co-writing the screenplay, attempts to give the film an elegiac feeling, like a film from the 70s that didn’t have a rush to get to the point — the only issue is that the film doesn’t really have a point.
One significant criticism here would be that the film is relentless in its grim tone and horrific violence. It’s not even that it’s particularly different from a lot of thrillers of this kind, but the film fails to find much of a point in amongst all this. The story’s narratives don’t explore the true nature of the south, nor does it offer insights into the world on post-War-USA, both of which are missed opportunities to delve deeper.
The film is filled with people being shot, stabbed, choked, but meanwhile none of the characters are fleshed out enough to ever be compelling, which hurts all the more given the fantastic cast that Campos has assembled. Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Robert Pattinson, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska and Douglas Hoge are all present, but none of the plots play into anything significant enough for them to shine.
It’s a film that cries out to be a miniseries, able to have a slower, more intense tone, something that could take time, to build all these narratives across timeframes and give insight into what motivates and drives them. A subplot involving Stan as a sheriff looking to run for office is never really explored or explained, for instance.
That’s not to say that the film is bad, it’s just painfully incomplete. However, it is held aloft by actors at the top of their game, none more so than Pattinson as a corrupt preacher; his turn is the clear stand out showing that nasty depth he’s been slowly perfecting over the years. Couple that with Holland, who so often has been forced into the role of supporting actor after his five-strong turn as a certain web-slinger; the actor is able to channel the sort of performance that in times past would have been played by a young DiCaprio, or even further back James Dean.
The film’s endless killing of women before exploring who they are doesn’t help the audience experience its retro feel, showing that just because your film is set in a period of time doesn’t mean it has to curtail to the gender roles of that time. This is all the more confusing given that these are well-known faces playing female characters for two scenes before being shot, stabbed or killed off in some manner.
Given its near two and a half-hour run time you would expect a much more compelling exploration of faith driving people to darkness, what societies of guilt do to people, and the corruption of power. Instead, it’s a southern friend blood-drenched psycho-thriller, filled with good actors struggling to find a reason to exist.
It might be the case that idle runtimes are the devil’s playthings.
