The Devil All the Time (2020)
Director: Antonio Campos
Screenwriters: Antonio Campos, Paulo Campos
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Hayley Bennett, Kristin Griffith, Eliza Scanlen, Harry Mewling, Mia Wasikowska
Antonio Campos’s film adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s novel, The Devil All the Time, is a dark, slow-burning thriller set in the mid-20th-century American Bible Belt. With a high-profile cast that includes Bill Skarsgård, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, and wide availability on Netflix, the film drew attention from both fans of the book and a general audience. Adapting Pollock’s layered, interwoven stories was always going to be a challenge, and the Campos brothers—Antonio and Paulo—approach the material with fidelity to its mood and moral complexity, if not always with perfect narrative economy.
The film opens in 1950s Ohio and follows the fractured life of Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård) and his marriage to Charlotte (Hayley Bennett). From there it traces the upbringing of their son Arvin—first played by Michael Banks Repeta and later by Tom Holland—while introducing several secondary characters and plotlines that gradually converge. Religion and corrupted faith are the connective tissue: sincere belief, manipulation, delusion and violence all mingle in a landscape where piety often masks cruelty. Campos leans into that bleak atmosphere, making spiritual fervor feel menacing rather than consoling.
Violence and death recur throughout the story, and the film does not shy away from grim, sometimes gruesome moments. Many of the deaths carry a ritualistic or sacrificial undertone that heightens their emotional impact. The filmmakers give the victims and perpetrators enough texture that these losses land with weight—whether the ends are murder, suicide or illness. Even when violence is framed as necessary or justified, the film insists on the tragedy and moral cost behind it, resisting simple righteous vindication. That restraint is one of the film’s strengths: it delivers gutting scenes without glamorizing brutality.
Yet the adaptation’s commitment to character depth sometimes works against its momentum. In trying to honor Pollock’s expanded cast of lives and timelines, the movie occasionally feels bloated. Long stretches of measured atmosphere and quiet detail add texture, but they also contribute to a sense that the film is drifting. Around the midpoint, the runtime—clocking in at roughly 2 hours and 18 minutes—begins to show, and viewers expecting a taut, fast-paced thriller may find the pace taxing. Many scenes have retrospective payoff, and readers of the novel will likely appreciate the additional space given to peripheral figures, but the film could have benefited from a tighter edit to sharpen narrative drive.
Performances are consistently strong. Skarsgård and Holland anchor the film with layered portrayals of men shaped by trauma and upbringing, while Pattinson and other supporting players bring unsettling charisma to morally compromised roles. Campos’s direction and the screenplay capture the novel’s moral murk and the oppressive heat of its settings, even if the cohesion between strands occasionally wavers. Visually and tonally the film nails its period and its sense of doom; narratively it sometimes prefers implication over clarity, which will be either a virtue or a flaw depending on the viewer’s appetite for ambiguity.
In the end, The Devil All the Time is an ambitious, thoughtful adaptation that succeeds in creating a haunting portrait of faith, violence and consequence, but it is not without flaws. Its deliberate pacing and scope will reward viewers looking for complex character studies and moral unease, while those expecting a brisk, conventional thriller may be left wanting. The film is worth watching for the performances and the uncompromising atmosphere, even if it does not completely capture all of the novel’s depth within a single feature-length running time.
16/24