Watch trailer for ‘Devil All the Time,’ filmed in AL

Netflix has released a trailer for “The Devil All the Time,” a gothic thriller that filmed in Alabama in spring 2019.

There’s a lot going on in the 2:44 clip, which offers clues to several storylines in the film. Tom Holland is the star of the movie, but the cast also includes Rob Pattinson, Bill Skarsgard, Sebastian Stan, Jason Clarke, Riley Keough, Mia Wasikowska, and Eliza Scanlen.

“The Devil All the Time,” based on a 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock, is a multi-character tale that includes:
• None A tormented war veteran who believes in blood sacrifice (played by Skarsgard).
• None A troubled son who’s trying to escape his past (played by Holland).
• None Two serial killers who hit the highway to find their victims (played by Clarke and Keough).
• None A corrupt preacher who’s inclined to view members of his flock as sexual playthings (portrayed by Pattinson).

The movie, which will be available for streaming on Sept. 16, was filmed in locations such as Montevallo, Anniston, Jacksonville, Helena, Riverside and Birmingham. Folks in our state may recognize Pine Flat Church in Elmore County, which is prominently featured in the trailer. The church, built in the 1800s, also was used as a location in the 2003 movie “Big Fish.”

If you’ve read the book, you’ll recognize some of the major characters and themes -- such as violence, vengeance, religion, sexuality and guilt -- popping up in the trailer. If not, a plot synopsis for “The Devil All the Time,” provided by IMDB, might help:

“Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, ‘The Devil All the Time’ follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his ‘prayer log.’ There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.”

Holland (who played Spider-Man in five Marvel-centric movies) has the lead role of Arvin Eugene Russell, a son who’s been marked his family’s tragedy. Stan (known for his work as Bucky Barnes/The Winter Solider in four of the Marvel superhero films) plays Lee Bodecker, a cop who battles a growing waistline and leans to corruption.

Skarsgard (Pennywise in the 2017 version of “It” and 2019′s “It Chapter II”) has the role of Willard Russell, an emotionally ravaged man who makes blood sacrifices and damages his son’s psyche. Clarke (whose credits include Showtime’s “Brotherhood”) and Keough (a scream queen with credits in several indie horror films) portray serial killers Carl and Sandy Henderson, an odd couple who stalk their victims using sex and guile. Pattinson (the soulful vampire in the “Twilight” series) plays Preston Teagardin, a smooth-talking preacher whose morals are less than pure.

Director Antonio Campos co-wrote the script for “The Devil All the Time” with his brother, Paulo Campos.

“It was a hard book to adapt also because there was so much that we loved,” the director told Entertainment Weekly. “I’m a big fan of southern gothic and noir and this was a perfect marriage of the two. Sometimes you might be adapting a piece and you think like, Well, there is a seed of a good idea here and I’ll just throw everything away and start from scratch. In this case it was like, we love everything!”

Author Pollock was recruited by Campos to narrate the film, giving the adaptation a unifying voice and sense of authenticity.

“His voice is very powerful,” Campos says in an interview with Vanity Fair. “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.”