4 star brutal and deeply satisfying revenge thriller.
The Devil to Pay is an American film, set in the Appalachians and written and directed by Ruckus Skye (Rattle the Cage) and Lane Skye (Becky).
Originally titled The Reckoning, it was made in 2019 and is available to stream now on Digital platforms courtesy of Signature Entertainment.
“They want nothing from you and God help you if you try to interfere”
– 2010 Census worker
On a mountain in the Appalachians once regarded as a refuge from justice, duty and oppression, local legends and folklore grew up surrounding the families who made their home there. Their descendants remain there to this day, self governing and with their own creed and belief system.
Lemon Cassidy (Danielle Deadwyler – The Harder They Fall, Jane and Emma) is a struggling farmer living on the mountain with her young son Coy (Ezra Haslam). Her husband Tarlee is missing but that’s nothing unusual, he always comes back.
Their lives are thrown into chaos with the arrival of Wade Runion (Jayson Warner Smith – American Made, The Book of Love) and his brother Dixon (Brad Carter – Old Henry) on her doorstep. They insist that she make the trek to see the matriarch of their family Tommy (Catherine Dyer – Active Shooter), who has business with her.
Here she finds out that Tarlee has been up to no good and got himself into debt with Tommy. With Tarlee missing and almost certainly dead and her son’s life under threat, she must find a way to keep her little family safe, even at the risk of ending a decades old pact between the families and starting a war.
“What did you take?”
The Devil to Pay is an excellent film, very well written and a clever story with lots of twists and turns. Danielle Deadwyler’s performance is fantastic, so believable. She oozes dignity and self restraint with everything she does, from telling her son a story about crows pecking out eyeballs and swallowing them whole, to beating a man to death. 
Catherine Dyer is also great as Tommy, equally at home handing out death threats as she is giving cookery tips.
There are some brilliantly strange elements too, a group known simply as The Heathens, who have based an entire religion around acid (the corrosive kind) and are lead by the plainly crazy Fire Keeper (Tim Habeger – Last Goodbye) and the mountain community has a very real sense of otherworldliness.
Gripping throughout and with an extremely satisfying ending, this is a brilliant film, a real shining light in the revenge genre and well worth a watch.
“Behold, from the ether to the physical form. Nature provides.”
Signature Entertainment presents The Devil to Pay on Digital Platforms 17th January
