The Devil All The Time - New Release Review

I saw the trailer for this and thought it could be an Oscar contender. Then I watched the movie, and experienced a mix of emotions. One was “f%ck incorrect trailers”, another was a confused “what the hell was the point of that?” and the third was maniacal laughter.

The Devil All The Time is based on Donald Ray Pollock’s book of the same name, which I have not read. I’m going to assume that it’s way better as a book than as a movie, as it’s easier to convey a hard-boiled, tense atmosphere in a book than in a movie. Especially if the movie is one of the most stupid, poorly-edited, unintentionally funny movies I’ve seen in quite a while.

There is so much I want to talk about with this movie, so let’s start with the acting. That’s the most positive notice I can give to this movie…to an extent.

Tom Holland is really excellent in the film and the best part of the movie, a real step up and maturation from his previous work. Riley Keough and Harry Melling (Elvis’s granddaughter and Dudley Dursley, respectively) also provide the film’s brighter spots when Tom Holland’s not around.

But as I said…to an extent. Virtually everyone else in this movie (except for Robert Pattinson, who I’ll get to) feel like nothing. They all speak with the same tone of voice, at the same pacing and get virtually no character development whatsoever. It’s almost like watching the Star Wars prequels and hearing everyone speak in that boring, flat, methodical way, only here it’s more mumbly and southern.

Then there’s Robert Pattinson. I think Pattinson was trying to go for that “charismatic preacher” stereotype that everyone’s seen from televangelism channels, to give his character an aura of respect. But I was instead – surprisingly – reminded of Raul Julia from 1993’s Street Fighter, which I am certainly glad for. Pattinson sure wasn’t monologuing about how genocide was just a Tuesday for him, but his incredibly hammy line delivery and facial expressions (I’ve never seen someone more grumpy during a blowjob) sure was carving him a path to the Street Fighter remake. At least it livened the film up a bit.

This movie is also edited so incredibly poorly. This movie feels an hour longer than it actually is, because none of the interwoven stories seem to connect in any thematic/visual/vicarious way for huge periods of time. It also doesn’t help that during some scenes, a stable smooth shot will suddenly randomly cut to a handheld camera shot which looks just awful.

In particular, there’s this one scene set in a car (I replayed the movie a couple of times to be sure I wasn’t tricked), where the camera is a still shot on Jason Clarke. The camera then visibly cuts (the image jitters)…to the EXACT SAME ANGLE (a different take they tried to cut in in the same shot). It’s like accidentally hitting the camera button on your phone multiple times while taking a selfie, and there’s these little differences between photos. Holy hell, the fact that it made it into the movie is straight-up embarrassing.

Note that when my thumb reaches the bottom at the 2nd revolution, it jitters as it switches shots? That's this movie.

Now to the writing. I already said that this movie feels an hour longer than it is due to the atrocious editing. But then the screenwriters thought it would be a great idea to throw in a lot of narration (given by the book’s author, Donald Ray Pollock) to explain in excruciating detail what was happening onscreen.

Exposition and information in films is one of the basic things you need to learn in screenwriting 101 – if you need to convey information to the audience to understand the plot, do it in a visual way via acting or symbolism, or have something interesting going on while the information is conveyed (Temple of Doom’s chilled monkey brain while giving backstory on India, for example). If you simply tell the audience what to feel like they’re children, then you will annoy the crap out of them and bore them. It also doesn’t help that the dialogue between characters is ripe for inserting this information in naturally, instead of the insipid blah that the actors spill to each other in the film.

I also want to focus on Antonio Campos’s direction. Now I like Antonio Campos for his work on Christine and The Punisher, but I have no idea what happened here. This whole movie feels directionless – as I mentioned, shots will go randomly from smooth to handheld for no reason, actors aren’t distinct from one another in their delivery, and exposition is simply doled out without investment of imagination. Campos never seems to proceed into a scene with a through-line, doing nothing clever and often leaving gaping logic errors in his shot blocking (a character doesn’t see someone sneaking behind them with a gun, despite standing in front of a very reflective window).

He also has no idea of what to do on a technical perspective. The music (by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans) for this movie is literally the exact same piece repeated 5 or 6 times throughout the movie, the same exact slow piano melody without any sort of differentiation, and it's distracting as hell. I hated the cinematography as well – aside from being boring and completely flat for the most part, it never bothers to convey any sort of emotion, thematic idea or tone, just being the exact same style for all 3 of the major stories. Near the 30-minute mark, there was also this hideously off-centre shot of Alexander Skarsgård (looking bug-eyed instead of distraght as a result) that began the many of this movie’s unintentional laughs.

(Can’t get the shot due to Netflix blocking screenshots, so here's Jason Clarke and Riley Keough).

I did not expect to laugh at this movie, but Campos’s awful direction elevated whatever mild giggles I had into full-pitched laughter. One of the main reasons is that often a scene will end with the last 3 seconds suddenly bursting full of 1950’s music, completely out of nowhere like a parody movie such as Hot Fuzz. It’ll be “mmblemmbleOOOHHMAAAHBAAYBY” at the end of a really serious scene, and I could just not help myself with the chuckles.

Much of the discussion around this movie and the book focuses on the brutal violence committed by its lead characters. However, in the movie, that violence often comes across as so over-the-top it’s laughable. In particular, there’s one scene set in a car (the same one with the awful same-angle cut I mentioned) where suddenly it cuts to Jason Clarke mounting a guy and maniacally snapping photos, while the guys squirms like a tadpole with blood spraying out of his dickless groin and a naked woman runs in the background. It could be amazing symbolism, but it was so out of nowhere and stupid that I lost all care and exploded with laughter. It may not sound funny, but trust me - if it was in a comedy movie or TV show like Archer, it would be hilarious.

My biggest laugh, though, came from the CGI. On iMDB, there is no visual effects house credited for this film, so it was probably done by Netflix for no money on Photoshop. And wow…there’s a scene where Harry Melling pours spiders over himself during a sermon, and they look like rubber toys from a National Geographic store. My laughter overpowered everything around me.

Holy Mary, Mother of Troy…this movie was really f%cking bad. I cannot believe that this was so bad, that people actually thought “that’s a good shot” after each take and rolled with it. This needs a director like David Lowery or David Fincher or somebody to come in and fix what little remains of this wreck.

I’m going to give The Devil All The Time a D.

Have you seen The Devil All The Time? If so, what did you think of it? Leave your answers in the comments below.