In a Small Town, the Pious and the Sinful Have a Deadly Collision

Tom Holland in "The Devil All the Time" 
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

Director Antonio Campos’ psychological-thriller, “The Devil All the Time,” has the promise of a tension-filled ride with its talented cast traversing through an epic, southern crime parable, which is based on the acclaim novel by Donald Ray Pollock, which was published in 2011.  However, the movie hardly reaches the powerful heights that’s promised by its intriguing setup.

The story takes place in 1950 and follows Arvin Russell (Tom Holland), who must protect his loved ones while living in Coal Creek, West Virginia, a rural town that’s plagued by corruption.

While the whole cast has terrific performers, most of them are tasked with playing characters who are one-dimensional.  The only character who has an adequate arc is Holland’s, portraying a young man who must utilize the rules of survival that he was taught as a child and apply them to the dangerous situations in which he finds himself.  Holland brings across Arvin’s rough upbringing in a performance that shows the toughness that he has built up over the years.  This is a role that makes one intrigued in seeing what Holland can do with roles that are more dramatic because he certainly has the talent to find success with such characters.

Robert Pattinson plays the community’s new pastor, a character, like many others in this film, who is frustratingly underwritten.  But, he still makes an impression with his character’s fire-and-brimstone pontificating.  He provides the film with scenes that add some fervor to the narrative, being a perfect example of what it means to make the most out of material that limits your character.  Just like Holland’s performance, the one given by Pattinson is one of the few good things that you’ll remember from this movie.

The rest of the cast includes an array of established actors, such as Riley Keough and Jason Clarke as a murderous wife and husband; Eliza Scanlen as Arvin’s adopted sister, and Sebastian Stan as an amoral sheriff.  While all of these performers do fine work, the material that they’re given isn’t enough make these characters engaging, and you end up not feeling interested in any of their arcs.

The screenplay by Antonio and Paulo Campos takes what could have been a sprawling mosaic of mid-twentieth century crime, but just uses the barest levels of what could have been done.  The many characters that are introduced at the start of the film make you hopeful for some memorable interactions amongst them, but hardly any come to pass.  There is so much potential here, but the characters aren’t explored as in-depth as they should be.

Besides the mostly lazy work with the characters, the movie doesn’t have anything interesting to say about the theme of deceit when shedding light on the local parish and police force, those to whom we turn for guidance against the evils of the world.  Instead, the story just scraps along on the bare minimum of this subject.  It’s an aspect such as this that has you wonder why the movie needed to be over two hours if it wasn’t going to explore its subjects in greater, more complex detail.  All of that time goes wasted on a narrative that doesn’t take full advantage of the material with which it could work.

What’s worse is that this movie feels like it wants to say something, but just ends up being a movie that thinks it’s saying more than it is.  The unnecessary narration, which is done by the novel’s author, spells out what you’re already thinking, as if it’s trying to be deep, but also hold your hand in stating the obvious.  You want to hear these characters convey their emotions themselves, not hear someone else speak for them.  One of the biggest surprises of this movie is why the author would agree to do this.

Because of how uninteresting most of the characters are, Campos isn’t able to make us feel any of the apprehension that befalls the characters as they get into life-threatening situations.  All of the ingredients are there for a gut-punch of a thriller, but the shortcomings of his and Paulo’s screenplay limits what the former could have done as a filmmaker.  With that, none of the big events of the film have any impact, and each scene pretty much just ends with a shrug of your shoulders. 

Just like the characters in “The Devil All the Time,” you may find yourself praying at certain points, and those prayers go towards the hope that this movie will get better.  Unfortunately, those prayers go unanswered.

Grade: C