Just because you’ve never heard of someplace doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Take unincorporated Knockemstiff, Ohio, the setting for several of the acts of venality and vile affections that litter the film’s 138-minute running time. With its depiction of soldiers bringing the violence of war back home with them, The Devil All the Time continues what The Irishman started. There were also moments that couldn’t help but call to mind pulp novelist Jim Thompson’s vivid slime. (A character is described as smelling “worse than a truck stop shitter.”) From post-WWII through the early ’60s, we follow a remarkably unsavory group of characters; cancer claims the only decent one in the bunch at the 30-minute mark. Fed up with the questionable veracity nostalgia lends to period pictures? Longing for films that depict the past in the same unflatteringly perverse light that they often do the present? Curious about a time where it was heretofore unthinkable for a killer thumbing a ride to be picked up by a pair of serial killers? Fans of grubby crime thrillers who don’t mind a lack of character development and who are willing to overlook some of the film’s campier flights of lunacy are in for a good time. Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Simon Killer) directs a capable cast led by a jittery, finely nuanced performance from Bill Skarsgård. (2020) — Scott Marks