‘The Devil All the Time’: Tom Holland Is a Saint Turned Sinner

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.”

Holland, the writer-director said, had a much different acting style. Campos first began working on his adaptation of The Devil All the Time five years ago, casting the 24-year-old right after Sony tapped him to be the next Peter Parker. Holland has since become a bankable star, carrying two Spider-Man movies and becoming an integral part of the broader Avengers universe. (The Devil All the Time has a surprisingly Marvel-ous pedigree, between Holland, Stan, and producer Jake Gyllenhaal, another Spider-Man alum.)