coronavirus pandemic, but it found its home at Netflix after being released in select theaters a few days prior.
The Devil All The Time is set in the town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, and follows the stories of some of its residents, among those an unholy preacher (Pattinson), a crooked sheriff (Stan), and a twisted couple (Jason Clarke and Riley Keough). Their lives converge around young Arvin Russell (Holland), who fights the evil forces threatening him and his family. Given its cast and the tone of the story (as seen in the trailer), The Devil All The Time was one of the most anticipated Netflix releases, but now that it’s available to stream, critics are not that impressed.
Just a few days after its release, The Devil All The Time has a 66% Tomatometer score at Rotten Tomatoes, pointing at mixed reactions. Critics aren’t fully on board with the movie’s tone, which was too dark and violent to some, and without something in the story to justify it. Others feel the story does nothing for viewers to care about the characters, calling it “messy” and a product that not even big names like Holland and Pattinson could save. Here are some samples of negative reviews The Devil All The Time has gotten:
“The Devil All the Time” shows us a lot of bad behavior, 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.
There is no reason to care about anyone in Antonio Campos’ “The Devil All the Time,” a sweaty, bloated mess of a movie that flushes a knockout ensemble down the drain. More a pileup of scenes and tragedies strung together than the Altmanesque kaleidoscope of intersecting lives it could have been, this slog of an adaptation from Donald Ray Pollock’s terrific Appalachian gothic is dead from the start, with stars like Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson eagerly doing their best to resuscitate the corpse for a nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time.
CNN:
The casting alone should spur interest in "The Devil All the Time" -- Batman (Robert Pattinson) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), together at last -- but can't make the movie feel like less of a slog. Adapting Dale Ray Pollock's grim novel, awful characters proceed along parallel tracks, en route to a whole lot of violence and unpleasantness.
Not everything is negative when it comes to The Devil All The Time, and amidst all the criticism over its tone and story, there’s a lot of praise for the cast’s performances, particularly those of Holland and Pattinson – and even those who didn’t get enough screen time got some nice comments. Some critics took time to point out other strong elements in the movie, such as the soundtrack and photography, with special praise on Campos’ decision to shoot on film, which adds to the aforementioned dark and grim tone that others were so critical about.
Holland, though, gradually takes command in the film's second half, as Arvin feels compelled to move from beating up high schoolers to a more definitive kind of vigilantism. Arvin is a very serious young man, still shaped by boyhood tragedy, and the actor doesn't need a lot of external theatrics to show us why Arvin has to do what he does. A nail-biting confrontation between him and Pattinson's preacher feels like it should be the movie's finale, but it isn't. And this is the rare occasion when continuing on after such a sequence isn't a mistake.
There are strong performances throughout, even ones that aren’t allowed a lot of screen time. Skarsgård captures the PTSD of a man who worries God can’t hear him anymore; Holland shows his range in a role he may not be expected to carry; Keough & Clarke are disturbing partners in crime. And then there’s Pattinson, who will be the divisive performance of the movie in that he seems to be approaching the whole project more from a camp perspective than the rest of the ensemble. However, this broad take fits a man who has to hide his hollow soul in front of his parishioners. It works for me.
EW:
With a cast so large and so consistently good, it's nearly impossible to single out more than a few players, though it's maybe most gratifying to see Holland so far from Peter Parker mode; his performance is delicately underplayed, which is not a claim Pattinson can probably make with a straight face. But as he did in his preening turn as the Dauphin of in last year's The King, the future Batman digs into his predatory minister with a kind of red-meat glee that's contagious. (Keough, too, brings remarkable nuance to a type of femme fatale too often left in two dimensions.)
Dark stories with a lot of violence will always be welcomed with mixed reactions, as not everyone will be into them, and it’s even more difficult to please the audience when the story comes from a novel highly praised by critics upon its publication. The Devil All The Time will draw a lot of attention thanks to its cast, and whether the story and performances are enough to keep viewers entertained and amused will depend on each person, especially on how well each one tolerates violence.
