The Devil All the Time, 2020

Feb. 4, 2022 | SARA BIZARRO

The film, The Devil All the Time is a complex plot-dense film with many characters that are mostly bad people, even though some are presented as religious and others not. The film starts with a story of a man named Willard (Bill Skarsgård) whose parents were religious and he decided the honorable thing to do for him was to join the military and fight for his country. During the war, he saw an officer crucified in a cross still alive, but with his body already decomposing. Willard shoots the officer behind the ear, to end his misery. This made Willard doubt if God really exists and he came out of the war with PTSD. Even though Willard is a very damaged individual, he meets a woman named Charlotte (Haley Bennett), and they have a child named Arvin (Michael Repeta). This experience makes Willard return to the fold of religion so to speak. Unfortunately, his wife gets cancer and there is nothing the doctors can do to save her. Willard, since he recovered his faith, thinks that praying will save his wife and makes his son Arvin pray with him. Since praying does not improve his wife's condition, Willard thinks that God requires something more, so he sacrifices the family do, and crucifies the dog, echoing what he witnessed in the war. He does all this in front of his son, Arvin. As is to be expected, the dog sacrifice did not work, and Arvin's mother dies, Willard becomes severely depressed and kills himself, leaving Arvin alone.

After the death of his family, a police officer comes and takes Arvin to his grandparents. There they also have another orphan at home, a girl, Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) who was the daughter of Willard's previous friend Helen (Mia Wasikowska)(Willard's mother wanted him to marry Helen). Lenora's parents also have a tragic story that is related to religious experience. Lenora's father, Roy (Harry Melling) believed God had saved him from his fear of spiders. In a speech at church, he makes a speech, or maybe it's more of a performance. This is what he says: "Let me tell you something friends, before I found the Holy Ghost… I was scared plumb to death of spiders. I was a runt, hiding under my mother’s long skirts, spiders crawling through my dreams, laying eggs in my nightmares. They was… hang in their webs everywhere… waitin’. I had fear in me all the time, awake or asleep, didn’t matter. Now, that’s what hell is like, brothers and sisters! I got no rest from them devils! Not until the Lord gave me strength [crowd] Amen! Brothers and sister behold! The Lord looks out for me now!" At this point he opens a jar of spiders over his head. During this stunt Helen is impressed by Roy and the next time they appear they have a child. However, this time Roy has locked himself in a closet because he was bitten by a spider while doing one of his stunts. He has a crisis of faith, stays in the closet for several days, one day gets out of the closet and takes his wife Helen to the woods, kills her with a screwdriver, and then asks God to bring her back. This was supposed to be a show of faith, that he was willing to kill whom he loved the most, and that he believed God would bring her back to life. Roy runs away and eventually meets up with a couple of "pornographers" Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy (Riley Keough). They pick up hitchickers and then incite young men to have sex with Sandy while Carl takes pictures, only to kill them aferwards.

In the town where Arvin and Lenora live there is a preacher, named Preston (Robert Pattinson), that is morally corrupt. He seduces Lenora, she is young and easy to manipulate into doing whatever he wants. He gets her pregnant, and when she asks him what she should do, he says they will never believe her. Lenora forms the intention of hanging herselve with a nose at home, she makes the nose and stands on a chair, she changes her mind and is trying to untie it when she slips and dies. Arvin suspects the pastor and finds out he is still doing it to other women. At this point Arvin has had enough and decides to take matters into his own hands, killing the pastor, leaving a note explaining how he did it, and decides to head back to where his parents lived. He hitch hikes and gets picked up by the serial killer couple, Carl and Sandy. Arvin still has his gun with him and he realizes something is off so when they stop he ends up killing Carl. Sandy has had enough of Carl and the sex and kill scheme and had her own gun, so she shoots Arvin, but it turns out Carl had loaded her gun with blanks, so when she shoots Arvin he shoots her back and she dies.

Back in Arvin's hometown, the police officer from the beginning of the movie, who is Sandy's brother, and who is a power grabbing individual who just killed another man and is trying to kill is way to getting a promotion, is informed that his sister and her husband god killed. He is worried that more about what may come out and that it may ruin his reputation, than their death. Arvin and the police officer have e a confrontation near where Arvin's father killed the dog in the beginning of the movie. When he faces the police officer Arvin says: "I’m not a bad person, Sheriff. That preacher weren’t no good! He hurt my sister so bad she killed herself, Sheriff! I had no choice! I hate to be the one to tell you this, Sheriff, but your sister and her husband, they weren’t no good neither! I got a snapshot in my pocket here of her hugging on some dead guy. You let loose that gun and I’ll show it to you! I had no choice. They were gonna kill me, I swear. I begged her to put the gun down." The police officer gets shot and dies. Arvin takes off, gets another ride and on the radio, there is a message from the President of the United States announcing that even more troops will be sent to fight in Vietnam. Arvin starts thinking maybe he should just join the army, like his father.

This film is obviously about violence, and how cyclical it is, while at the same time commenting that the state itself is the first one to promote it through wars. Regarding Divine Command Theory though, this film can be understood as on the one end as critical of several aspects of religion. Divine inspiration is heavily attacked since it can lead not just to hope, but also to desperation and insanity. Organized religion is criticized, through the character of the preacher who abuses his unchecked power. However, a complete lack of morals is also attacked, in the characters of the serial killers, who are not religiously inspired at all, and in the character of the police officer who is only interested in power. The movie is called The Devil All the Time, and it may be hinting that all these characters are inspired by the devil, no matter how they present themselves. Therefore, we cannot rely on official representatives of divine authority, nor on divine inspiration to learn about right and wrong. Arvin represents the character who decides to think and make his own judgments, even though afterward his only solution is more violence, since that is all he has ever experienced. So even he does not escape the curse.

But is this film anti-religious? I once had a student point out to me that these characters could be seen as representing the seven deadly sins, here is what she said regarding the characters and the seven deadly sins:

"1. Pride - Roy Laferty (Harry Melling)

Roy's pride in his faith was his downfall, pouring the spiders on himself believing he would not be bitten then he was. Then believed that God would give him the ability to resurrect the dead, leading him to stab his wife in the neck, killing her.

2. Greed - Sheriff Lee (Sebastian Stan)

The Sheriff was focused on the upcoming election, he would do anything to stay in power, including covering up his sister's and her husband's murdering spree.

3. Wrath - Arvin (Michael Repeta, Tom Holland, Emilio Campos)

Arvin's anger was portrayed in acts of revenge towards those who wronged the ones he loved. For example, beating up Lenora's bullies, and later killing Reverend Preston who convinced her to commit suicide after raping her.

4. Envy - Willard (Bill Skarsgård)

Willard's prayers were not answered by God to save his wife from cancer. He was envious of others who got their prayers answered, led him to commit suicide.

5. Lust - Reverend Preston (Robert Pattinson)

The Preacher used his position of power to sexually abuse the young women in the town. Knew that people trusted him as a religious figure and exploited their trust for his own desires.

6. Gluttony - Carl (Jason Clarke)

Carl continued to kill young men to satisfy his fantasy. Carl viewed killing as a religious experience, knew Sheriff Lee would cover up the murders thus continued to kill in the same area.

7. Sloth - Sandy (Riley Keough)

Though Sandy did not enjoy killing with Carl anymore, she did nothing to stop him and stayed complicit."

If this is so this film may be more Christian than meets the eye, in fact, it may be showing us what is wrong from the Christian point of view, and clearly exemplifying that by arguing that these characters are none of them following the rules of Christianity adequately. However, this does show that what is often portrayed has an advantage that comes from a Divine Command Theory, the fact that there is a firm foundation regarding right and wrong, does not necessarily help anyone, since they may be genuinely trying to follow Gods Commands and still fall into obvious mistakes and misinterpretations, even committing deadly sins while they are at it. We may as well then , instead of searching for what God commands, look at good and bad directly, and that way we may reach what many religions recommend, without the pitfalls of misinterpretation that can come from conflicting religious experiences, teachings and opaque divine inspiration.