The Devil to Pay

Really solid revenge thriller with good performances

Really solid revenge thriller with good performances

Someone else here posted having watched this which reminded me that I’d been meaning to as well (so thanks!).

In short, ‘The Devil to Pay’ is a pretty accomplished-looking, low-budget vengeance thriller set on a mountain in Appalachia where laws and punishments are carried out independently of any government influence. As a thriller, this is a convenient way to get around police involvement and, barring the cars, weaponry, and electric generators, could pretty much have been set in any era of American history.

The story is fairly straight-forward, though the reason for the main plot driver is withheld for quite a while. In the meantime, a woman (Danielle Deadwyler) is coerced into making good on a debt allegedly owed by her now-missing husband and the film follows her as she works towards that end, eventually turning the tables on her enemies (this is all in the trailer).

In the lead role, and I can’t stress this enough, Deadwyler is exceptional. She’s able to shift from wary to fearful to resolute to caring—really anything, it seems—with an ease that looks incredibly natural and fluid. Even the way she carries herself is utterly convincing. It’s an incredible performance. On every level, she’s so good that she more than compensates for the film’s shortcomings.

Which it, unfortunately, does have. There’s some pretty underdeveloped story points (the cult sequences in particular are rather too pat), the heavies are rather one note (except Catherine Dyer’s character, whose other note does not seem at all realistic; the performance is fine, it’s just not well-written), and the resolution is pretty abrupt given the stakes involved. The film does an OK job of contrasting the beauty of the landscape (there is some really nice cinematography here) with the grim undercurrent of menace, but the points where they meet are creaky. 

Again though, it’s well worth watching for Deadwyler (and I’m going to need to look at more of her work).

Someone else here posted having watched this which reminded me that I’d been meaning to as well (so thanks!).

In short, ‘The Devil to Pay’ is a pretty accomplished-looking, low-budget vengeance thriller set on a mountain in Appalachia where laws and punishments are carried out independently of any government influence. As a thriller, this is a convenient way to get around police involvement and, barring the cars, weaponry, and electric generators, could pretty much have been set in any era of American history.

The story is fairly straight-forward, though the reason for the main plot driver is withheld for quite a while. In the meantime, a woman (Danielle Deadwyler) is coerced into making good on a debt allegedly owed by her now-missing husband and the film follows her as she works towards that end, eventually turning the tables on her enemies (this is all in the trailer).

In the lead role, and I can’t stress this enough, Deadwyler is exceptional. She’s able to shift from wary to fearful to resolute to caring—really anything, it seems—with an ease that looks incredibly natural and fluid. Even the way she carries herself is utterly convincing. It’s an incredible performance. On every level, she’s so good that she more than compensates for the film’s shortcomings.

Which it, unfortunately, does have. There’s some pretty underdeveloped story points (the cult sequences in particular are rather too pat), the heavies are rather one note (except Catherine Dyer’s character, whose other note does not seem at all realistic; the performance is fine, it’s just not well-written), and the resolution is pretty abrupt given the stakes involved. The film does an OK job of contrasting the beauty of the landscape (there is some really nice cinematography here) with the grim undercurrent of menace, but the points where they meet are creaky. 

Again though, it’s well worth watching for Deadwyler (and I’m going to need to look at more of her work).