The Devil All the Time
Netflix | Release Date (Streaming): September 16, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
19
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
UproxxVince ManciniOct 7, 2020
The Devil All The Time is a lovingly-constructed quilt of interlocking insanity, about how the simple life is anything but simple and salt-of-the-earth folk are every bit as screwed up as debauched debutantes. You want to reminisce about the good ol’ days, kid? Well then, let’s peel away the postcard facade. The Devil All The Time is a masterpiece of dark Americana. Read full review
90
We Got This CoveredBilly GivensMay 26, 2021
The Devil All the Time is an emotionally powerful look at familial trauma, religious corruption, and one man's will to challenge his fate. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 16, 2020
At first, the jigsaw puzzle seems needlessly difficult to solve, but once all the pieces are in place and we see the big picture, we’re left with admiration for director/co-writer Antonio Campos’ ability to weave a memorably brooding film from Donald Ray Pollock’s novel of the same name. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel MurraySep 15, 2020
What’s haunting about The Devil All The Time — and, ultimately even a little hopeful — is this idea that there’s a world beyond this world, where perhaps not everyone is so cruel or intense. It may not be the biblical Heaven; but that’s okay. Sometimes Cincinnati will suffice. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 11, 2020
With a cast so large and so consistently good, it's nearly impossible to single out more than a few players, though it's maybe most gratifying to see Holland so far from Peter Parker mode; his performance is delicately underplayed, which is not a claim Pattinson can probably make with a straight face. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeSep 13, 2020
However dark the narrative may seem, there’s a strong streak of black humour that accompanies the horror, often facilitated by a pointedly chosen tune. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 22, 2020
The period detail is impeccable and The Devil All the Time gets high marks for its establishment of time and place. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 16, 2020
The various praiseworthy elements of The Devil All the Time ultimately override the feeling that they aren’t quite cohering into a great movie overall. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 15, 2020
The Devil All the Time is really a portrait of a place, told through the lives of several people across a span of about a dozen years, and the thing that makes it interesting — from start to finish — is that this place is so brutal and appalling and unexpected in its various cruelties that we cannot stop watching. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 11, 2020
Extremely well wrought. Not overwrought. Not underwrought. Just wrought. Read full review
75
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaSep 11, 2020
Sprawling and brutal, The Devil All the Time is not for the impatient or the squeamish. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 17, 2020
Mr. Campos and his superb cast confer such authority on the whole thing that there’s no choice but to follow the film’s three time-hopping, befuddlingly intertwined stories — for 138 minutes, no less. Read full review
70
Film ThreatHunter LanierSep 17, 2020
None of the characters feel real, necessarily, but they’re all immensely watchable in their own right. Read full review
70
IGNRobert DanielsSep 14, 2020
The Devil All the Time is made purposely provocative by Antonio Campos imbuing an unrelenting gruesomeness into every frame. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeSep 11, 2020
Though its structure doesn't always work to maximum effect, the grim picture gets more involving as it goes and benefits from a hell of a cast. Read full review
68
PolygonKaren HanSep 16, 2020
The film is easy on the eyes, and its cast is strong, but that doesn’t make up for a thin story. The action keeps moving by necessity, given how many characters are in play, but stop to inspect the proceedings, and it becomes clear that that movement isn’t based on much. Read full review
63
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 17, 2020
Although the film can be a tad unrelenting, it’s highly watchable. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 21, 2020
There is an argument here about the corrupting influence of religion on ordinary Americans, but it is made with such bellowing cacophony that tinnitus ends up blurring the syntax. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 16, 2020
There is something weirdly pointless about it all, and there is a kind of tonal gap where, in another kind of film, the humour might go – which would counterweight the nasty violence. But it sure does pack a punch. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 15, 2020
You can reject the conclusions of Campos’ movie, particularly its unrelenting pileup of dead bodies, and still take pleasure in its atmospheric surface — in the persuasiveness of its small-town environs (shot on 35-millimeter film by the gifted cinematographer Lol Crawley) and the vigor of its performances. He may not persuade you all the time, but the devil is very much in those details. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatt MaytumSep 11, 2020
Robert Pattinson delivers another film-stealing supporting turn. Read full review
60
EmpireDan JolinSep 11, 2020
A mixed bag of bones and bodies, whose Southern Gothic atmosphere and superb performances — from Holland especially — are let down by the film’s lack of narrative focus. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsOct 8, 2020
The Devil All the Time has the pretensions of a mythopoetic story that’s chipping away at a community’s dark underbelly. But here the misery is as belly-up and eager to be noticed as a house cat or a dead fish. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 17, 2020
A little mystery and a lot less narration would have better-served this sordid saga. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJake CoyleSep 17, 2020
The craft and thick Gothic atmosphere of The Devil all the Time is impressive. The movie has such fine-wrought texture that it holds you in its cold grasp. But it’s also somewhat oppressive. Read full review
50
Screen RantMolly FreemanSep 16, 2020
The Devil All the Time is a slow, sprawling thriller, unfurling with creeping tension, but the cast's performances are more rewarding than the story. Read full review
50
CNNBrian LowrySep 16, 2020
The casting alone should spur interest in The Devil All the Tim -- Batman (Robert Pattinson) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), together at last -- but can't make the movie feel like less of a slog. Adapting Dale Ray Pollock's grim novel, awful characters proceed along parallel tracks, en route to a whole lot of violence and unpleasantness. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 15, 2020
The result is that the particularly cruel delights of Pollock’s writing get lost in an adaptation that can never nail any of its sprawling cast of characters, or escape the Southern-fried clichés that the novel transcends. Read full review
50
The PlaylistCharles BramescoSep 11, 2020
Like so many characters in this glum, shaggy ramble of a film, Campos gets lost in the woods. Most directors in his position fall victim to overreaching, as ideas overlap and confuse and weaken one another. He makes no such error, instead spreading a humbler film’s sum total of content across an unwieldy canvas. Read full review
42
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonSep 11, 2020
It’s a shame to see a movie this ambitious and well-cast turn out so wobbly, but The Devil All the Time inevitably sinks under the weight of its self-importance. Read full review
42
IndieWireRyan LattanzioSep 11, 2020
There is no reason to care about anyone in Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time, a sweaty, bloated mess of a movie that flushes a knockout ensemble down the drain. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 20, 2020
The Devil All the Time is an antiseptic slog, too streamlined to make us care and too literal-minded to pull us in. We never really get to know any of these characters aside from their villainy and/or victimhood. They’re paper fish in a cardboard barrel. Read full review
40
ABC NewsPeter TraversSep 18, 2020
Even with Spider-man Tom Holland and new Batman Robert Pattinson in the leads, this violent tale of backwoods sin and corruption suffers from a severe case of too-muchness. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 16, 2020
Every faded dress looks attentively fitted, each ramshackle house artfully weathered. If the performances are considerably less persuasive it’s partly because Campos shows no interest in the inner lives of his characters. And while Pattinson’s and Keough’s roles are risible, the actors at least show signs of (comic) life. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 11, 2020
Antonio Campos introduces us to a world in which murder, violence, and suicide are commonplace, but he fails to find much new to say about this bleak thematic terrain. Read full review
40
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 11, 2020
The Devil All the Time shows us a lot of bad behavior, but the movie isn’t really interested in what makes the sinners tick. And without that lurid curiosity, it’s just a series of Sunday School lessons: a noir that wants to scrub away the darkness. Read full review
30
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 17, 2020
Intricately crafted as it is, Campos’s film is downright simple. It’s sloppy pulp packaged as prestige, which makes the meanness of its condescending gaze that much meaner. Read full review
30
TimeStephanie ZacharekSep 17, 2020
The Devil All the Time is just a pileup of awful people doing terrible things, for no reason other than to prove how wretched humans can be. The template is pure Southern Gothic, but without the subtlety of top-drawer practitioners of the genre, like Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineChuck BowenSep 14, 2020
Every moment in The Devil All the Time is meant to be a galvanic, preachifying high point, and so the characters aren’t allowed to reveal themselves apart from the dictates of the plot. One can scarcely imagine a duller lot of sacrificial lambs. Read full review
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