THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME — Movie Review
By John Argote Rodriguez
“The Devil All the Way” was released on September 16, 2020 on Netflix and stars Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, and Mia Wasikowska with Robert Pattinson.
Based on the 2011 novel of the same name; “The Devil All the Time” tells the depressing story of Arvin (Holland), Preston (Pattinson), Carl (Clarke), and Lee (Stan) to name a few about depressing stuff and how each depressing stuff becomes super depressing and how it’s all just depressing, depressing, depressing, depressing depressing .
Did I forget to mention depressing?
My God this movie is one big depression fest from start to finish all having the connection to God, but any who with that said and all the anticipation from this film because of the staked cast how did this Netflix flick turned out? Well before I give out my thoughts I wanna I wasn’t excited for the film. Sure it had a nice cast, but Netflix has track record of having its original films not exactly at the quality. For every “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” and “The Irishman” you have 15 “The Cloverfield Paradox”, but who knows maybe this’ll be another gem right?
No.
This movie was boring as balls because the nothing was really happening it was just different characters in series of events all having some connection to the Lord. The film was present jumping back and forth with different characters in a anthology like way and it took long for the plot to kick in. I understood what the filmmakers were going for, but it just didn’t work for me.
Another issue I had was the narration by the author of the book this film is based on. Sometimes the narration was fine, but then it would just become exposition and explain everything as if the audience couldn’t pick up on what they were going for.
Despite the negatives I do have some positives. The first is clearly the performances which are stellar especially from Spider-Man and Batman themselves. Pattinson isn’t in the movie much though he gives a solid performance, but Tom Holland is the star of the movie and he shines. I’ll admit I did take a little to get use to not seeing him as Spider-Man, but that faded after a bit. Seeing Holland in a role that wasn’t Spidey was a breath of fresh air.
When the movie finally starts moving it’s engine it gets really good, but this doesn’t take place until more than an hour and a half into the movie. The ending was awesome similar to how last year’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” had that epic Tarantino goodness, this film had its equivalent to it and it was great, mainly because of Tom Holland and because thank God the plot finally went into motion and everything went full circle.
“The Devil All the Way” is a film that had so much potential, but instead we got a borefest full of depressing scenes after scenes until the we hit Holland’s breaking point and everything starts moving and the movie becomes intriguing. It’s not a horrible movie just a dull one with a satisfying conclusion, but I think you guys should check it out I’m sure this is gonna be one of those movies that have half the audience calling it a poetic masterpiece and the other a dull one.
Check it out it’s streaming on Netflix as of today. You never know you just might like it.
Grade: C-
