A movie that co-stars Spider-Man, the Winter Soldier, and the future Batman might sound like the world's greatest superhero movie, but the new film from Netflix, The Devil All the Time, is very much not that. The first trailer for the new film has arrived and it's given us a very dark and disturbing story. It may not be something that a lot of people were expecting, but then that's part of what makes it so compelling.
Tom Holland looks to be our main character based on the new trailer, but I would hesitate to use the word "hero" to describe him. He'll play the role of Arvin, a young man living in post-World War II Ohio who finds himself surrounded by a collection of dark characters played by Sebastian Stan, Robert Pattinson, and Jason Clarke. Check out the new trailer below.
While I will admit I'm not usually looking for particularly dark stories in my movies these days, the world is full of enough of that, there's something drawing me in about The Devil All the Time. Perhaps it's seeing Tom Holland play a role so far from what I am used to seeing. Based on the plot synopsis his character of Arvin is focused on trying to protect his family from the various evils that are surrounding them, but at the same time, Arvin doesn't appear entirely innocent himself. When the character is given a gun at the beginning of the trailer it's difficult to tell if he truly doesn't like it, or if he's simply afraid of what it might mean for him.
We see that Arvin is going to use that gun, because of course he is, and we even see where he plans to use it. It doesn't honestly feel like the trailer is giving all that much away. The far more interesting question of The Devil All the Time is why and how things have come to this point.
While this may be about as far from a superhero story as you can get, it is, in a way, a Spider-Man: Far From Home reunion, as the new film is being produced by Jake Gyllenhaal. The Devil All the Time is based on an award-winning novel by Donald Ray Pollack who grew up in the town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, where the story takes place.
In a normal year of cinema, we tend to see more serious dramatic films begin to appear in the fall, and while the cinema landscape as a whole has gone haywire, Netflix has mostly been able to continue with business as usual. The streaming service had to put a halt to movies in production just like everybody else but has no had no problem releasing projects and has even picked up a couple of new ones as movies originally designed to open in theaters shifted to streaming.
The Devil All the Time arrives on Netflix on September 16.
