A town without pity — for the viewer
Holland, Pattinson collide in uninspired Netflix drama
The Devil All the Time Streaming, Netflix
LOS ANGELES Robert Pattinson has a way of making scene-stealing entrances.
He does it again in The Devil All the Time, a drama of sin and salvation, set in southern rural Ohio from 1957 to 1965. Pattinson plays a preacher, and a scoundrel, which we know from the moment we see him, since he favours powder-blue sport coats worn over open-collared shirts with ruffles — he's like Elvis as an undead apostle.
The preacher, whose name is Preston Teagardin, specializes in fulminating sermons. Seated in his Chevy along with Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), a trusting parishioner, he tells her, “To show yourself as the lord made his first children is to truly show yourself to him.” That's a fancy way of saying, “Take off your clothes.”
For Pattinson, playing a domineering Bible Belt sleaze is a cred move, and he does a stylish job of it. But the movie that surrounds him is a long and doughy mystery-dud. It turns out that everyone in the small town of Knockemstiff has something to hide, but we see all the rote dirty secrets laid out like dishes at a potluck. And so the movie, directed and co-written by Antonio Campos, lacks the spark of discovery.
The Devil All the Time is based on a 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock, and Pollock narrates it, in a textbook case of telling rather than showing. Sorry, but a little of that is dull, and a lot of it is deadly.
The hero, Arvin Russell, played by Tom Holland, who has made a smart move in taking on the role of someone who can beat up people and blast bullets through them without a twinge. Arvin grows up in Knockemstiff under the shadow of his father, Willard (Bill Skarsgård), a Second World War veteran who teaches Arvin to use his fists in a righteous, make-the-sinners-pay way. But there's a lot of sin to be cleansed. The town is a hotbed of corruption and crime.
There is also a fundamentalist serial killer on the loose. Carl (Jason Clarke), a burly creep, works as a team with Sandy (Riley Keough), a prostitute whose bond with him is never remotely explained. They pick up handsome strangers along the highway, whom Carl then coerces into having sex with Sandy, all so that he can photograph the action — and then kill the stranger, which is some sort of cleansing ritual for him.
The violent kinkiness is everywhere, yet in another way it's just window dressing. Arvin, a young man who's good inside, shows each of the sinners what's what. Yet you never feel much investment in his odyssey of salvation.
The Devil All the Time shows us a lot of bad behaviour, but the movie isn't really interested in what makes the sinners tick. And without that lurid curiosity, it's just a series of Sunday School lessons: a noir that wants to scrub away the darkness.
Variety