Religiosity passed down through generations can become a trap when mixed with pain and the delirium of redemption. In “The Devil All the Time”, what initially seems like a rural American drama takes on far more disturbing contours — not by invoking the supernatural, but by brutally dissecting the ways in which faith, manipulated by charismatic voices and fragile minds, transforms into an instrument of destruction. The apparent linearity of the plot is merely a disguise: the film fragments time and reconfigures its characters under a gaze that, though distant, is never neutral. The narrator — none other than the author of the original novel — lends the narrative a tone that oscillates between cynicism and compassion, guiding the viewer through a gallery of wounded souls, each struggling in their own way to achieve some form of salvation.
Antonio Campos approaches this narrative with an ambition that rejects didactic subtleties. He unleashes an avalanche of events upon the audience, all interwoven by corroded moral threads, testing the boundaries between empathy and judgment. Every aesthetic choice serves a broader purpose: this is not about telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end, but about recording the effects of a contaminated spiritual inheritance. The screenplay’s gaps — whether intentional or not — become voids where the viewer is forced to step in as both judge and confessor. The film offers neither comfort nor answers. Instead, it compels the audience to walk alongside the characters through a brutal landscape where the sacred and the profane are inseparable, exposing how religious discourse, stripped of compassion, can give rise to monsters disguised as pastors and loving fathers.
Willard Russell’s tragic journey introduces this spiritual collapse with almost prophetic clarity. A man broken by distant wars returns to a homeland that no longer recognizes him, trying to reconstruct his world through faith and romantic love. His marriage to Charlotte is painted with tender strokes until her illness turns the divine into a bargaining arena rather than a source of solace. The sacrifice of Arvin’s dog in the name of healing lays bare the perverse logic tainting Willard’s choices: the greater the suffering, the closer the redemption. It is in this act — brutal, irrational, masked as piety — that the film establishes one of its core moral pillars. Charlotte’s death and Willard’s suicide are not isolated tragedies; they mark the complete collapse of a belief system that confuses devotion with punishment.
Arvin, heir to this ruin, grows up under the weight of a legacy blending guilt, violence, and oppressive religiosity. His life, however, does not follow a traditional redemptive path. Time advances, and the film finds him in a town dominated by a new form of spiritual corruption: Reverend Teagardin. Robert Pattinson’s character embodies the grotesque side of religious leadership, donning the pulpit with the same vanity one might reserve for expensive shoes. His seduction disguised as preaching, his disregard for consequences, and his coldness toward others’ pain render him a villain who feels disturbingly real. His relationship with Lenora, marked by manipulation and abandonment, leads to yet another death shrouded in silence and hypocrisy. The cycle repeats itself — only now Arvin, armed with memories and a warped sense of justice, strikes back.
“The Devil All the Time” does not merely expose evil — it dissects it as an ancient infection that adapts, hides, and reinvents itself under new forms. The film’s oppressive depiction of the American heartland not only geographically contextualizes the story but also visually translates the moral decay of a place where goodness is often defeated by ignorance, and where faith is summoned not to enlighten, but to condemn. The characters move like survivors of invisible wars, trapped by legacies they did not choose, struggling to carve out minimal coherence in a world that has lost its ethical contours.
In the end, the film delivers neither comfort nor catharsis. Arvin is no hero, but an inevitable link in a chain that stubbornly repeats itself. The viewer is left with more questions than answers — as it should be. There is something deeply unsettling about realizing that the evil portrayed here requires no hidden forces or supernatural beings: it thrives in a community poisoned by false promises of salvation, where fear replaces faith and punishment usurps the place of love. That is the true abyss that “The Devil All the Time” dares to lay bare — and therein lies its most haunting power.
Film: The Devil All the Time
Director: Antonio Campos
Year: 2020
Genres: Drama/Thriller/Crime
Rating: 9/10