Director/Screenplay – Brandon McCormick, Story – Nicholas Kirk & Brandon McCormick, Producers – Karl Horstmann & Nicholas Kirk, Photography – Samuel Laubscher, Music – Nicholas Kirk, Visual Effects – Triple Horse Digital (Supervisor – Monda Ray), Production Design – Tonya Haswell. Production Company – Brick Lane Entertainment/Triple Horse Studios/Whitestone Motion Pictures.
Cast
Nicah Robinson (Enoch Daylong), Brendan Bradley (Ishmael Daylong), Jordon Bolden (Abraham Daylong), Rainey Qualley (Francine), Mark Ashworth (Clarence), Keith Carradine (Nehemiah Daylong), Brad Carter (Stumpwater)
Plot
The Daylong brothers, Ishmael, Enoch and Abraham, travel through Georgia acting as enforcers for Clarence, a dealer in souls, tasked to find those who have sold theirs but have reneged on their contracts. Though each of the brothers was born to a different mother, they share the same father. They are searching for their father due to the fact that he sold their souls before they were born. Clarence has agreed to furnish his location if they fulfil his quota of human souls.
The Devil and the Daylong Brothers is a film that comes rooted in the American south. While to most The South conjures cliches of rednecks and embittered racism, Gospel hellfire preaching, an obsession with guns, clinging to the Confederate flag and saying “ya’ll” a lot, this is a film that feels like a dive into the world by people who really live there. It certainly doesn’t leave the redneck, guns and Gospel cliches behind, but rather is one that enlivens them. It gets the feel and energy of the place and of homeboys with a holy mission looking to stomp some butt.
It is also a dive into the world of Southern folklore, the same world that we see in films like The Legend of Hillbilly John (1972), Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024) and in particular the Southern blues/Gospel mythology of Crossroads (1986) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Brandon McCormick creates a unique almost cartoonish style that is part a gritty The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-85) road movie, part musical, part grim loner action film with a Diabolical Pact plot tacked on top of this. The nearest comparison I can make is some kind of mix of Crossroads and the Preacher (2016-9) and Brimstone (1998-9) tv series with an aesthetic somewhere between Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. Although the closest comparison would actually be Sinners (2025), which came out three months later in the year and featured a Mississippi Delta setting in the 1930s and a blues music background with two African-American brothers up against vampires.
This all comes together in a mix that works surprisingly well. The Devil and the Daylong Brothers has an insane energy driven by its cast and the dialogue. The latter comes with a use of regional colloquialism that feels as though it has been turned out by a comic-book writer with a wonderful ear for smart and funny dialogue.
The Daylong Brothers – (l to r) Enoch (Nicah Robinson), Ishmael (Brendan Bradley) and Abraham (Jordon Bolden)
Even the musical side of it works not too badly – the tracks are easily ones I would import to my playlist if there were a soundtrack. Particularly good is a sequence that has the brothers singing a number while in the midst of a shootout and car chase.
The performances are all top notch with only Jordon Bolden being a little quiet among the other two highly energised performances from Brendan Bradley and Nicah Robinson as the other two brothers. Rainey Qualley, the older sister of Margaret and the daughter of Andie McDowell, gives a performance that oozes slutty Southern seductivity and quite wraps itself around the screen.
The Devil and the Daylong Brothers was a feature-length directing/writing debut for Brandon McCormick, who had been making short films since the early 2000s. His only other full-length work has been a documentary about the lost Roanoke colony.
