Just as director/co-writer Antonio Campos did in his previous feature (Christine), he sympathizes with downtrodden and unfortunate souls but cannot show them mercy. Weaving a complex tapestry which spans a couple generations, Campos examines not the devil, but the different forms of evil which reside in all of us. There are very few characters who possess anything resembling goodness here, but that’s all right because the darkness and moral decay are part of the southern gothic spell this expansive tale encompasses.
Thanks to the narration by the source novel’s author Donald Ray Pollock, the film feels like a genuine novel, flitting from character to character as if by the turn of a page or the end of a chapter in an impressive display of cinematic scope. Violence often arrives in brief, matter-of-fact bursts which are highly effective and quite brutal. The cast is uniformly solid and although there are some plot holes and clumsy exposition, its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses.
Commentaires