Butler's Cinema Scene

Bill Skarsgard (left)

“THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME” My rating: B-

138 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Some people are born just so they can be buried.”

That glum observation, spoken by a corrupt lawman, pretty much sums up “The Devil All the Time,” a slow-bubbling stew of old-time religion and blue-collar mayhem.

Imagine a partnership of Flannery O’Conner and Jim Thompson. It’s pretty unpleasant…but has been acted and produced with enough brio to keep us hanging on.

Directed by Antonio Campos (“Christine,” TV’s “The Sinner”) and scripted by Campos and his brother Paulo (from the novel by Donald Ray Pollock), this is a  saga covering 20 years and three generations of a family (two families, actually) living in southern Ohio and nearby West Virginia.

Tom Holland

It’s a world populated by devotees of Ol’ Time Religion, feral and/or delusional preachers, dirty cops and a couple of serial killers who prey on hitchhikers.

The whole thing is narrated by novelist Pollock, who has just the right down-home voice (half sincerity, half deadpan sarcasm,  hint of a twang) to pull it all together.

The story?  Where to begin…”The Devil All the Time” is all over the place.

It starts in 1945 with the return from combat of Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgard), still haunted by what he experienced and rebelling at God. It then follows Willard’s son Arvin (Tom Holland) through a traumatic childhood.

For both father and son religion is more a burden than a comfort, in large part because of the hypocrisies so lavishly displayed by clergymen like the bombastic Roy Laferty (Harry Melling in  spectacularly hypnotic/creepy form) or the snakily seductive Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson), who preys on the naive young things of his congregation.

Jason Clarke, Riley Keough

And then there’s Carl and Sandy (Jason Clarke, Riley Keough), a couple who cruise around picking up young men. Sandy seduces them, Carl takes photos of the action and then murders the unfortunate fellows.  There must be a dozen or more of their victims (Carl, who has ambitions to high art, calls them his “models”) buried throughout the woods.

Robert Pattinson

They’ve gotten away with it for so long in part because Sandy’s brother Lee (Sebastian Stan) is the local law, a scumbag in bed with local gangsters.

So that’s several plot threads to deal with.  And I haven’t even gotten around to talking about the hapless Helen  (Mia Wasikowska) or her daughter Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), who maintain a family tradition of falling for crazy Bible-waving bastards. Not to mention the wheelchair-bound, guitar-pounding evangelist played by real-life music cult figure Pokey LaFarge.

“The Devil All the Time” paints such a ghastly portrait of small-town religion (not to mention small-town minds) that one comes away with the impression that it’s a world populated exclusively by users and idiots.

Moreover, the picture lacks one central character around whom we can wrap our hopes (although in the late  going Holland’s Arvin steps up).

So why stick with it? Well, some of the performances are riveting (doubly intriguing in that the cast is heavy on English and Aussie actors doing Appalachian accents); there’s also a nifty soundtrack of vintage recordings (ranging from the late ’40s to late ’60s) than slyly comment on the proceedings.

There aren’t any laughs here, but you gotta love that much of the film is set in Knockemstiff OH (a real place, by the way).

| Robert W. Butler