Mind-Blowing update about ‘The Devil All The Time’

TDATT trailer released earlier today.

It’s Tom Holland’s birthday, and he’ll kill if he wants to. In The Devil All the Time, the sprawling Southern gothic drama directed by Antonio Campos (Christine, Simon Killer), Holland stars as Arvin, a good Christian boy in the Bible-thumping town of Knockemstiff, Ohio. In the trailer for the upcoming Netflix film, available exclusively above, watch as Arvin starts to tear away from God, drifting into darkness after being gifted his late father’s gun on his birthday. 

The Devil All the Time is based on the epic 2011 Donald Ray Pollock novel of the same name, which traces two generations between World War II and the Vietnam War. The vivid drama has a remarkably stacked cast, including Sebastian Stan as a crooked sheriff, Riley Keough and Jason Clarke as a couple harboring a grim secret, and Robert Pattinson as Preston Teagardin, a roving preacher who grifts his way across town in a powder blue suit, monologuing with a heavy Southern drawl about the various “deluuusions” that lead people toward sin. 

“It’s one of my favorite scenes in the film,” Campos told Vanity Fair of Pattinson’s “Delusions” speech, part of which can be heard in the trailer. “That whole speech is really inspired. There are certain performances where it almost feels like a possession, and I think this is one of those performances.”

For the director, working with Pattinson—an actor who’s been known to spin beautifully absurd yarns on the press circuit—was an “unpredictable” experience. “He likes to tease you,” Campos said with a laugh. “I had a sense of what he was doing and we had talked a lot about the character, but the Teagardin that came out when we started shooting—that was the first time I saw Teagardin.” 

“You have to trust the person’s going to do something good and be comfortable letting go of some of your control as a director,” Campos continued. “That’s very much how I approached Rob. There are takes that are absolutely insane and don’t make it into the movie. Rob would just go.”

“Tom’s process is so methodical and thoughtful and sensitive,” Campos said. “He’s a really kind person.”

The British Holland was particularly careful about his accent, working diligently to achieve a believable, period-appropriate Ohioan drawl. For Campos, watching the actor’s career transform over the course of making and editing the film has been thrilling, if a little surreal. “It was just exciting,” he said, chuckling at Holland’s ardent following. “I’ve gotten to know the fanbase a little bit.”

While The Devil All the Time might have a starry cast in front of the camera, the greatest coup just might be the one you don’t see. Campos, who cowrote the script with his brother, Paulo Campos, became fixated early in the process with the idea of having Donald Ray Pollock voice the film’s narration, an idea he wasn’t sure the author would like. But to his surprise, Pollock was quick to say yes, lending his narration—and, more broadly, his blessing and a fresh stamp of authenticity—to the adaptation. 

“His voice is very powerful,” Campos said. “We needed a narrator to guide us, to connect all these pieces and give us a sense that there is something bigger at play here. It had to be Don.”