The Devil and the Daylong Brothers

Three Brothers: Jordan Bolden, Brendan Bradley and Nican Robinson

I could pick nits with it from now till Doomsday, but Brandon Mccormick's The Devil and the Daylong Brothers is bold and inventive. A Southern Gothic musical set in the pre-cellphone era, the film function as an update of Supernatural  with the addition of an extra brother. The songs are serviceable country blues pastiches, but writer Nicholas Kirk, the co-auteur of this flick, imbues them with doom and propulsive energy appropriately leading us to the inexorable climax. Mccormick frames the pitiless violence and songs with handheld immediacy sometimes lapsing into hysterical overkill. On the whole, though, this approach bears fruit as Mccormick and Kirk have constructed a narrative of superior craft that all comes together like a fine timepiece

The mythology of The Devil and the Daylong Brothers is Satanic gobbledygook. Three brothers from different mothers are paying off their Dad's debt to his satanic majesty by dispatching those whose time it is to pay for their Faustian bargains. Last on their list is Dad who sold his soul to be the ultimate blues singer. Now that said father is played by a veteran actor/singer most famous for crooning the excruciating "I'm Easy" to various femmes in Nashville is problematic to say the least, but I'm not going to pick the nit of the white bluesman here and Keith Carradine acquits himself extremely well. Most of the acting is quite good for a B movie, though Jordon Bolden seems to be doing a bizarre Rami Malek impression. The best vocals are provided by Rainey Qualley, Margaret's sis and the sole femme (fatale) here, better known in music circles as Rainsford. The Devil and the Daylong Brother has opened to little fanfare by streaming on Apple TV, but it is vigorous cinema for those who don't mind an impaled eyeball or two.