THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Antonio Campos (18, 138 mins)
Donald Ray Pollock’s excellent, grim novel is transformed into a bleak film that misses out on subtleties and nuances but remains occasionally affecting. Pollock, who also narrates with a whimsical resignation, crafted an epic Southern Gothic of interweaving stories – a damaged war veteran with a dying wife, a pair of serial killers, a philandering priest, snake oil showmen preachers, corrupt police officers and a compromised moral centre who becomes an agent of unwitting vengeance.
Naturally, the rich source material can’t possibly fit into two-and-a-bit hours, but writer/director Campos has a good stab at it, spanning decades of storytelling. Bill Skaarsgard, free from clown makeup, is the damaged veteran – haunted by seeing a crucified soldier, he seeks solace in extreme religion and sacrificial offerings to try and save his terminally ill wife, enlisting the help of his young son Arvin to help. Naturally, things do not go well. Alongside this are Jason Clarke and Riley Keogh’s road-trip serial killers taking photos of their young drifter victims; Keogh is corrupt sheriff Sebastian Stan’s sister and Tom Holland is the grown-up Arvin, dragged into these various webs by tragedy.
Holland is excellent, showing a steely adult side absent from his Spiderman, and Robert Pattinson also slimes around as a preacher more interested in deflowering young girls than preaching the ways of the Lord. It is unremittingly grimy, but elevated by a melancholic score from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans. The characters that populate this tough world, set in postwar middle America until the mid-1960s, are – it seems – godless and lost, with nothing but taciturn heartache to propel them onwards. Far from cheery, with truncated leaps that lack detail, this is an involving if misery-soaked drama with solid performances from the mind of Knockemstiff writer Pollock. The book is far superior, of course.
words KEIRON SELF
Available on Netflix now
