The Devil All the Time (2020)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Arvin Eugene Russell	Tom Holland
Willard Russell	Bill Skarsgård
Preston Teagardin	Robert Pattinson	½
Lee Bodecker	Sebastian Stan	½
Sandy Bodecker	Riley Keough
Carl Henderson	Jason Clarke
Lenora Lafferty	Eliza Scanlen	½
Charlotte	Haley Bennett	-
Helen Hatton	Mia Wasikowska	½
Roy Lafferty	Harry Melling

Review

The title says it all in this mystery-thriller from filmmaker Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Christine). Based on the novel by Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time is a fairly ambitious tale of how the lives of many are intertwined by various types of religious connections in post-war Ohio and West Virginia. The film starts rather bleak and pessimistic, before getting bleaker and more pessimistic as it goes along. It may not have been intented that way, but the perpetual descent into darkness comes off as deterministic, something for which there is no cure other than to repent and hope for the best. It’s almost as if the film buys into the hellfire theories of the religion it so overtly criticizes. Still, it never ceases to fascinate. And the star-studded cast is having a field day, particularly Tom Holland as our protagonist Arvin, the talented Bill Skarsgård as his dad, and Harry Melling and Robert Pattinson as two wild-eyed members of the clergy, both of whom give performances which are so fun to watch that they almost become counter-productive.