Netflix released an original movie, “The Devil All the Time” on Sept. 16. This film was better than I expected. With a church and sinners vibe, the film shows how sinners end up getting what they deserve.

The film starts out with young Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta), who had a rough childhood, living with his mother and father. His mother, Charlotte (Haley Bennett), has cancer and his father, and Willard (Bill Skarsgaård) has a terrible temper and a wicked mind. Arvin develops trauma from his parents — he inherits his father’s aggression and temper tantrums. 

Arvin (Tom Holland) is now older and was taught about knowing when to fight, and waiting for the right time to attack. Arvin has the best intentions, but his aggression really gets the best of him when it comes to people bullying his sister, Lenora (Eliza Scanlen).

One of the twisted sinners of the film was the Reverend Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson). He came to be at the church Arvin and Lenora go to, and publicly embarrassed their family. Teagardin was hypocritically preaching about the Lord while performing actions of a sinner by having manipulative sex with women, one being Lenora. 

Everyone in the film has their flaws which gets in the way with their relationship with God. There’s a couple, Sandy (Riley Keough) and Carl (Jason Clarke), who are serial killers that pick up hitchhikers and photograph the twisted games they play with them. Eventually, Arvin and the couple end up crossing paths.

Arvin does the right things throughout the film, even though some of his actions might be deemed unethical — they were the right choice, in my opinion. He made sure people would get what they deserved, while putting his own life at risk.

The husband-wife killers were my favorite part of the storyline, with interesting actions and questionable morals. I almost wish there was more about them throughout the film.  

One of the taglines from the film is “some people are just born to be buried,” and I felt this was fitting for a film that was all about sinner’s actions catching up to them. There is a lot of violence and killing in the film, but it fit the storyline and setting in a not-overbearing way.

The cast was full of well-known movie stars, but their accents were terrible. Pattinson easily had the worst accent attempt out of all the cast. The performances alone were good, but the film felt like it was missing something with those accents.

The timeline of the movie was hard to follow in the beginning, but half way through the film, the beginning started to make sense. With the beginning going back and forth between characters and years, it can be hard to follow who is who.

Since the movie was developed from a book, I liked the narration and the in-depth qualities it brought. The narration provided details from the book that helped explain the plot and made the film (that was already kinda hard to follow) a little bit easier to understand. 

It was a slow moving plot, and there was a lot of build up for some of the character’s actions. It was definitely a movie I wanted to see at least one time, though I don’t think I’ll go back for seconds.

3/5 stars