Netflix's 'The Devil All The Time' Looks Like A Blood-Soaked Take On The Southern Gothic
A Netflix executive recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the company was in "pretty good shape" when it comes to releasing movies during the Covid-19 pandemic. That feels like an understatement – while movies slated for theatrical release have seen their release dates delayed again and again, or have debuted on-demand to little fanfare, Netflix has been steadily releasing movies that seem to find an audience. And it looks like The Devil All the Time could be another hit film for the streaming service. The movie features a cast loaded with starry names, and it's based on an acclaimed novel. Here's everything we know about the project so far.
The film stars Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and other big names.
The Devil All the Time is a family saga in the southern gothic style, and features Spider-Man star Tom Holland as lead character Arvin Russell, while Tenet's Robert Pattinson plays preacher Preston Teagardin. The cast also includes IT star Bill Skarsgard, Sebastian Stan of The Avengers, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska, Sharp Objects' Eliza Scanlen, and Haley Bennett. The film was directed by Antonio Campos, who's best known for his 2016 movie Christine, which starred Rebecca Hall as Christine Chubbuck, a real-life news reporter who struggled with depression and ultimately committed suicide on live television in 1974.
Here's Netflix's official synopsis of the project:
In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters – an unholy preacher (Robert Pattinson), twisted couple (Jason Clarke and Riley Keough), and crooked sheriff (Sebastian Stan) – converge around young Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family. Spanning the time between World War II and the Vietnam war, director Antonio Campos’s ‘The Devil All the Time’ renders a seductive and horrific landscape that pits the just against the corrupted.
The movie is based on a 2011 novel of the same name.
The movie is based on Donald Ray Pollock's debut novel, which follows the Russell family over several decades in the real town of Knockemstiff, Ohio and West Virginia. The story is brutally blood soaked noir filled with scenes of animal sacrifice, rape, and murder.
Here's the how The New York Times described the tale in its review:
The story begins with the return of a veteran, Willard Russell, from the Pacific island abattoir of World War II, where he has seen a fellow soldier skinned and crucified alive. He carries this vision home, but as the novel proceeds and the lives of Willard’s mother, his uncle and especially his son carry forward, the Russell clan is beset on all sides by nightmares the equal of anything Willard experienced in combat.
If the story begins with a guy witnessing a crucifixion, expect things to get very, very dark.
The movie will debut next month.
Alongside his brother Paulo, Campos wrote the screenplay for the film. "It was a hard book to adapt also because there was so much that we loved," Campos told EW. "I’m a big fan of southern gothic and noir and this was a perfect marriage of the two. Sometimes you might be adapting a piece and you think like, 'Well, there is a seed of a good idea here and I’ll just throw everything away and start from scratch.' In this case it was like, we love everything!”
The Devil All the Time premieres on Netflix on 16 September
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