God has no time for sinners in the southern gothic thriller The Devil All The Time
Based on the novel by Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All The Time is an ambitious, 138-minute feature that follows three different storylines all packed tight with religious fright. If you’re against organized religion, this film will probably reaffirm your disdain. It features an all-star cast that are all thieves of the spotlight. Each and every one shines bright when on screen. No one falls flat. The performances are incredible and without them, this film would be nothing but a beautifully painted empty cardboard box. Most impressive are Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgard, Robert Pattinson, and Harry Melling.
Spider-Man, Pennywise, Edward Cullen, and Dudley Dursley have all left the building.
Although not a bad film by any means, The Devil All The Time never gets the chance to properly take off. The biggest issue is that it’s actually too short. Two hours and eighteen minutes is a long runtime but for the story that it’s telling, it’s not long enough. It either needs to be longer or turned into a miniseries. If it had perhaps been spread out into four hour-long episodes, The Devil All The Time could’ve been something magnificent. There are too many characters and too many subplots. Its a bit too much crammed into a small space. Don’t let the length fool you, it is a very small space.
Also, there’s a narrator which I absolutely HATE! The narrator is the author himself, literally, who is only there to simplify the plot in an audiobook-like fashion. I really hate it.
The past
The whole first act is essentially just a prologue. This part of the book is titled, “Sacrifice.” Take that as you will. It runs for a whole 41 minutes before the main character, Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) is finally put in the driver’s seat. Everything up to that point is backstory. The film starts in 1945, with WWII veteran Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgard) home from the war but haunted by the horrors he witnessed. He lives tormented by his own struggling faith until he falls in love with a good-natured waitress named Charlotte (Hayley Bennett) and has a son, Arvin.
Meanwhile, we’re also introduced to Helen (Mia Wasikowska), a woman whom Willard’s mother had hoped he would marry before he met Charlotte. Instead, she marries the terrifying, deranged, and overtly righteous preacher Roy Laferty (Harry Melling). They have a daughter named Lenora, whose fate becomes intertwined with Arvin’s when both their parents suffer tragic ends. They are left as orphans and together go to live with Arvin’s grandmother, where they grow up as siblings.
The past comes back to haunt
Just the way the first half feels like a prologue, a lot of the second half feels like an epilogue. There is a brief section in the middle that feels like it might be the centerpiece but it’s fleeting and comes off as nothing but a dolly used to carry the film’s baggage over into the next scene.
Jumping ahead to 1965, Arvin and Lenora (Eliza Scanlen), now about 15, are still coping with the loss of their parents. After seeing his father’s mental deterioration in front of a cross, Arvin has lost faith in any sort of higher power. While Lenora puts her loss into her faith. I won’t say what happens after that but just know that it’s a slow burn of events that ends with Arvin going on an unintentional murder spree.
Everything about the film is part of a plot. Nothing is filler, which sometimes a movie needs to give it life. The Devil All The Time seems reluctant to admit that the past and present should be their own separate stories. It attempts to weave them together as if they’re one and the same, giving no room for breathing. Which is ironic because it’s also incredibly slow. One major flaw is the subplot involving a sheriff played by Sebastian Stan and a serial killer couple played by Jason Clarke and Riley Keonugh. They feel completely out of place and are really only there to enforce the third act, and it’s clear that this is because the film just couldn’t fit them in. It’s a shame too. If given more focus, this would have been a much more disturbing film. However, Stan does have the best line: “Some people were born just so they could be buried.” Make that the tagline.
Verdict
The Devil All The Time is too slow to be exciting and too brutal to be relaxing but it has its moments. There’s a large overreaching theme about testing your faith. Not necessarily religious, but faith in anything; in one’s self, in others, in family members. Everyone in the film is looking for a way to see God and some are so desperate for it, that they invertedly turn into sinners. Everyone descends into darkness and everyone is connected.
Despite my complaints, I honestly did enjoy this film. There are some blood splatters here and there and one momentarily disturbing image of a crucified dog, but other than that. this is not a typical horror film. Any horror that takes place is all internal. The setting is quaint, beautiful, but it’s the human characters that strike fear in the heart.
(3.5 / 5)
All photos owned by Netflix, Nine Moving Productions and Bronx Moving Company.
To a lot of fans, this is the film that killed the franchise. It says a lot that the next installment is yet another retcon. Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers attempts to explain Michael’s unrelenting evil, which lead to mixed opinions from longtime fans. There are two cuts of the film, theatrical vs producer’s. For a lot of people, the latter is the only one worth mentioning. Aiming to be as accurate as possible, I will be talking about the producer’s cut. Let’s begin!
Plot
We start Halloween VI with a six-year time jump from part five. Jamie is now barefoot and recently pregnant, running away from Michael as he wants her baby. While she manages to hide the little one away, Michael finally gets his hunger satiated by killing her. The moment is one of the most brutal ways in the franchise up until that point. Rest in peace, Jamie, you held your ground for as long as you could, the sequels were just too relentless.
The movie then cuts to a whole different scene going on. We have a new family living in the Myers house and their youngest child is hearing voices telling him to kill his loved ones. Tommy Lloyd is watching the family, played by none other than Paul Rudd in his first-ever theatrical role. Tommy still carries trauma from the events all those years ago when Laurie Strode was babysitting him. So when he finds Jamie’s baby, his part in the story becomes even more essential.
Dr Loomis also stars in what was Donald Pleasance’s final role before his passing. He and Tommy try to stop Michael once and for all before the cycle can repeat itself. As it turns out, Michael is a victim of a druid cult which makes him want to kill his family members every Halloween. Thorn, the cult in question, thinks they can control Michael and make him do their bidding. This results in catastrophe and Michael goes berzerk and kills all the cult members. Once again, it’s one of the most gruesome montages for the franchise up until that point.
Tommy and Kara are left to face Michael on their own which they manage to do with some corrosive liquid and good luck. However, nothing stays dead in this franchise as it’s soon revealed Michael somehow escaped and this time Dr Loomis might not be so lucky…
Overall thoughts
I would say for me personally Halloween VI definitely ranks somewhere near the bottom. The whole point of Michael is that there is no rhyme or reason to his killings and this film tries to go against that. I am glad the mistake was rectified by the upcoming installment. There were still some good things about it, such as Paul Rudd’s acting that reveals some raw talent as far as I’m concerned, as well as some direction choices and musical score. However, I also think it absolutely deserves all the criticism that it gets.
(2.5 / 5)
We’ve reached the final episode of American Horror Stories, season three. After the ups and downs of the season, I didn’t know what to expect. I felt that we were due a big finish, Killer Queens. But I feared we were in for a big letdown.
As it turns out, The Thing Under The Bed was neither.
The story
We begin our story with a little girl named Mary, who is scared of something under her bed. She sneaks out of her room, only to be caught by her father and sent back to sleep. And of course, there is something horrible waiting for her under her bed.
This scene cuts away to a woman named Jillian. She has strange dreams, including one about Mary. But her husband, Mark, doesn’t want to hear about it. He’s only interested in a little lovemaking because he wants a baby. Jillian doesn’t, which makes total sense because she’s already married to one. But her irritation with her childish husband goes away when he goes away. And by goes away, I mean he’s sloppily devoured by something vicious under their bed.
What worked
In short, this episode just worked. The acting was professional and believable. The cinematography and lighting work were wonderful, adding spooky effects and startling moments without impairing visibility.
Best of all, the story was solid. There were no plotholes to be found. Our main character, Jillian, was relatable and sympathetic.
This was maybe my favorite part of the story. I thought Jillian was a remarkably sympathetic character. She was dealt a hand she never asked for, having her husband slaughtered in their bedroom. I don’t think she missed him, so much as she was afraid of the legal ramifications of being caught with literal blood on her hands.
Then, when it would have been safest for her to just lay low and save up for a good defense attorney, she instead goes into unlikely hero mode. She does her best to save people, putting herself in legal and physical danger. It’s hard not to root for her.
It’s also a little hard not to root for the antagonist, too. I don’t want to ruin the twist for you, so I’m going to tread lightly here. But it’s great when you have an antagonist who might be off their rocker, but also maybe has a point.
What didn’t work
I can only really think of one complaint with this episode. And that is how frequently one character says the word Chickadee. And if you’ve seen the episode, you know what I am talking about.
I get it, he has a pet name for his daughter. It’s adorable. It’s meant to convey that the two of them have a healthy loving relationship and I get it. We all get it. Blind monks get it. But the fact remains that no parent on Earth calls their kid by their pet name every single time they speak an individual sentence to them. It was just too damn much.
All in all, this was a good episode. It was a classic story, turned on its head, told by professionals from start to finish. And I hope that if there is another season, we see more stories like this one. But after the efforts put into this season at large, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last we see of American Horror Stories.
(4 / 5)
If you’ve watched enough short-form horror anthology shows, you’ll notice that some stories are mainstays. Each show seems to put on the same sort of episodes, with the occasional surprising storyline that we’ve never (or at least rarely) seen before.
Leprechaun was an example of a repeated story—the story of a greedy thief whose punishment far outweighs the crime.
The story
We begin our story in 1841, with a drunk man leaving the bar one late night. He’s distracted by something glowing at the end of the well. When he reaches down for the glowing thing, he falls in. Moments later, he screams.
We then cut to the modern day. The well is still there, and now it’s surrounded by a dying town. In this town lives a young man named Colin. He’s married, his wife is pregnant, and he’s out of work. Like many of his friends.
Desperate for cash, Colin and his friends decide to rob a bank. They put together an Equate version of Ocean’s Eleven, and break in one night. But, of course, they find that the gold is nothing more than bait. And the creature waiting for them is something they never expected.
What worked
The first thing I want to point out is how real this episode felt. At least to anyone currently living in the same small town they grew up in. These characters felt like guys I went to school with. Guys I would see at the bar.
I appreciated the real anger and frustration these characters are feeling. Especially Colin. He’s bitter, and maybe he has a right to be. He did exactly what he was supposed to do to succeed. He went to school and invested in his career, and yet now he’s out of work and struggling to support his family. I probably don’t need to tell you how that feels. Because of this, we can all kind of understand why he was tempted to rob a bank.
I also want to talk about the fact that this was, as I said, an often-explored story. That can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. This story is told over and over because it’s a good story. A relatable story. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
What didn’t work
That being said, this version didn’t try to do much to break out of the mold.
Because we have seen this story so many times, most of us could tell the story themselves. I would have expected something new, or some twist. But, in the end, the story didn’t bring anything new to the discussion.
Maybe because of this, the ending left a lot to be desired. Trapped in the basement of the bank, everyone just sort of stares at everyone else, until the thieves give up. And that’s it. The ending wasn’t scary, shocking, or funny. It was just sad, on multiple levels.
Overall, this was an okay story. It was entertaining, if not surprising. I would compare this episode to homemade macaroni and cheese. Everyone’s got their own version, they’re all pretty good, and none of them are exciting.
There’s just one episode left in this season of American Horror Stories. Let’s hope they’ve saved the best for last.
(3.5 / 5)
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