The Devil All the Time (2020)

The Devil All the Time is the kind of grim, full-bodied American gothic that feels carved out of mud, scripture, and bad luck—an atmospheric crime thriller where every glance and backroad seems to carry a threat. Antonio Campos directs with a steady, unsparing hand, letting the period detail and creeping dread do as much storytelling as the dialogue, while the interlocking lives tighten into a noose of tension you can feel long before it pulls. Tom Holland delivers a fierce, quietly wounded performance that proves how much weight he can carry, and Robert Pattinson is mesmerizing as a swaggering, oily preacher whose charm curdles on contact. It’s brutally violent and spiritually bleak—definitely not for everyone—but if you can stomach the darkness, it’s a potent, absorbing film that stays with you like a bad sermon you can’t shake.

The Devil All the Time is aiming for a bleak, Southern Gothic crime tapestry about how violence, warped faith, and small-town corruption poison generations, and it commits to that mood without blinking. The problem is it’s so relentlessly grim and stacked with misery that it can start to feel like punishment rather than storytelling, with pacing that drags and characters who sometimes register more as symbols of depravity than fully lived-in people. There are strong performances (Pattinson in particular is memorably slimy, and Holland proves he can carry darker material), plus a few tense, well-constructed confrontations. But if you’re not up for extremely graphic violence, spiritual abuse, and a near-total absence of relief or hope, this isn’t a “thriller night” pick—it’s a grim endurance test.