The Devil All the Time

Steeped in Southern gothic, swarming flies and blood-and-thunder fundamentalism, the fourth film from indie darling Antonio Campos (Afterschool) represents a step towards the big time. It's an assured adaptation of the 2011 novel by master nihilist Donald Ray Pollock, who also narrates, and it follows a cast of conmen, murderers and crazies whose lives intersect - often violently - in rural 1950s Ohio. Our hero is Arvin Russell (Tom Holland), who must navigate the rocky path to righteousness despite the ravings of his war-traumatised father (Bill Skarsgård) and the calculations of a corrupt preacher (Robert Pattinson) who has designs on Arvin's step-sister (Little Women's Eliza Scanlen). Helped by exemplary performances from the largely European cast, the film conjures a bleak world of people broken by God's brutal designs, but there's something missing at the core. Perhaps it's because, like the book, it's a story more concerned with cataloguing its characters' misdeeds than comprehending them.