Finished watching the U.S.A.'s The Devil All The Time (2:19:00). I loved this film, and it finally made me a Tom Holland fan. Set in 1950s-1960s small-town America, it is really about how narrow-minded, Christian fundamentalists weave their own religion out of their dysfunctions, frustrations, and miseries. The casting, acting, directing, and camerawork are superb, and the film has the slow, lyrical pace of South Korea's Burn and the chilling straightforwardness of the 1970 The Honeymoon Killers. 

I can see why many Americans could not appreciate this film, though. It makes them feel very insecure. It shows us that corruption begins among the laid-back and the self-righteous. It showcases small-town fundamentalists as hypocrites whose lives ultimately contaminate everyone else's. Indeed, there are pockets of religious neurosis in every country, and the writer and director push that pie right smack into the viewers' faces. 

The reality, sad to say, is that spiritual enlightenment SHOULD ALWAYS be directly correlated with mental enlightenment and psychological enlightenment, but that it almost never is in this world. That is why fundamentalism is never the key to salvation, why fundamentalists are not spared from having shattered lives, and why the neurosis is carried on unto every seventh generation. All we can hope for is that fundamentalism does not exist in other worlds, in other galaxies. 

Wondering, though, why the Devil figures in the title. I didn't see the Devil anywhere in the film. All I saw was human nature.