The Devil All the Time is the story of a young man devoted to protecting his loved ones in a corrupted small town full of sinister characters.
Though if I had to explain the plot of the movie on the spot to some random man in a bar, I would say that it’s a character-driven story.
It revolves around characters of a small American town with its fair share of (overly) devoted Christians. And boy do I love me a movie about extreme faith. The driving force of the story is all its characters and their desires.
Arvin (Tom Holland) needs to find peace with his father’s doings and protect his sister, Reverend Preston (Robert Pattinson) uses his status to prey on young women to satisfy his needs, preacher Roy Laferty (Harry Melling) believes himself to have the power of God, Sheriff Lee (Sebastian Stan) wants to stay in the good graces of the town besides being a dirty cop, his sister Sandy (Riley Keough) and brother-in-law Carl (Jason Clarke) initially wish to have murderous artsy fun, but Sandy’s desires change throughout the movie.
The Devil All the Time’s biggest strength is its cast, without which Netflix would have ended up producing yet another long and potentially bleak feature. Tom Holland is its shining star and his performance is truly appreciated after seeing him mainly as our boi Peter Parker for the last couple of years. Don’t get me wrong, his performance in the MCU movies has been grand, if not amongst the best, but I do believe that brutal intensity and versatility is not something as easily explored within superhero movies in general. Speaking of, I cheekily enjoyed scenes between Arvin and Sheriff Lee — it kept reminding me of the actors’ Civil War (2016) scenes, and who doesn’t love Marvel pairings in completely different settings… Well, maybe Wanda/Pietro and their siblings’ relationship, which happened after the actors, Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, shared an on-screen romance in Godzilla (2014). I haven’t seen that movie but any screencaps where they’re kissing is a true minduck for me.
Back to TDALT, another strong aspect of the movie is its pace, which is just right. I can see how it can be seen as slow, or even redundant due to the voiceover. I thought quite the opposite and found the narration beneficial. I even found myself on the edge of my seat while listening to what he said, as he often was shared knowledge about the future of certain characters while scenes were unfolding. And of course, he’d know anyway, as the narrator is in fact the author of the book by the same name.
Now, the only criticism I have is that perhaps the start was lengthy and took its sweet time to get going. The movie makes up for it by the end of the first act, but it’s still a 2-hour long feature, for which I believe a punchy start to be good practice. Less time spent on stretched exposition would have allowed for more development on interesting side characters.
I gave The Devil All the Time a Letterboxd rating of 4 stars — I liked the pace and tone, the colour grading was chef’s kiss and I’m always a sucker for characters arcs that tie in neatly within one another. It’s a movie I would recommend for a moody night in, not there are many nights out allowed at the moment, with a warm blanket and hot drink.
