The Devil All The Time (2020)

[Eric Atreides]

Discuss Battinson's weird-ass accent lmao

[DAJK]

I'd put this as a borderline fresh on RT. There's some really great stuff here (all the acting, some scenes are just harrowing, and there's some truly powerful moments). However, this movie is also very frustrating, because I think there's only a few things it needed to do to be "great" instead of "okay". SPOILERS.

 

- Cut the narrator. Had some cool bits where they used it to foreshadow, but overall it was an excuse for the movie to tell us things rather than show us.

- Cut Jason Clarke's serial killer storyline, and Sebastian Stan's dirty cop storyline. Didn't need to be there at all. Would have been much more focused and honestly much more powerful if it had focused on Holland/Pattinson more, and have more of a buildup for Holland's character deciding whether he's going to kill Pattinson. Make that the emotional climax, rather than have it happen 45 minutes before the end of the movie. You can have Stan still chase after Holland/be killed by him, but make his character a "do-good" sheriff rather than a dirty one (maybe disillusioned with Pattinson's character the way the grandma was) and therefore his death is more tragic since he was led to hunt Holland down/try to kill him out of a misunderstanding due to his disillusionment.

- The movie kinda abandons its themes of religion/faith/blind faith/etc. halfway through and instead becomes a question of "will Holland become like his father". Both are find, but PICK ONE! And if you're going to settle on the "will he become like his father" question, answer it! Inception was allowed to have an ambiguous ending because DiCaprio's character completed his arc. It didn't matter whether he was dreaming or not. For Holland, the fact that we don't know whether he lived his days with "not Charles Manson" or going to Vietnam means the main question the movie asked of his character was never answered. Give us an answer. Is it tragic (goes to Vietnam) or triumphant (lives out peacefully)? 

 

Now I get that this is based on a book, so cutting out entire subplots, having different endings etc. can't really happen. But if these things all happened in the book and worked well, then the movie failed to explain why it was all necessary. That being said, it's not a BAD movie; it's nearly 2.5 hours and I wasn't bored. Lots of good things technically in here. But a stronger narrative focus/connecting character arc would have made this way better.