The Devil All the Time

Director: Antonio Campos
Year Released: 2020
Rating: 2.0

Multi-generational portrait of corruption just after World War II leading all the way to the Vietnam era: soldier Willard (Bill Skarsgård) returns home tormented by the memory of a fellow Marine crucified, he marries Charlotte (Haley Bennett) and they have a son named Arvin (Michael Banks Repeta as a boy, Tom Holland as an adult) ... who, when older, becomes a Righter-of-Wrongs, if you will.  While the cast is in fine form - even Holland, clearly miscast, does his best as the lead - there's a giant So What? element to it that weighs it down: there are symbols galore (Chekhov's Gun makes a repeat appearance) but the message seems to amount to "evil exists" and "overly religious types tend to be hiding something" which should surprise no one (and character motivation is really in question).  It's all neatly tied together in a writerly sort of way, though: novelist Donald Ray Pollock even provides the narration (which I think is a nice touch).