When I sat down with Sam Claflin to discuss his new film All the Devils Are Here, I couldn’t stop thinking about Videodrome. David Cronenberg’s nightmare vision of media, desire, and decay felt like a fitting lens for Barnaby Roper’s haunting crime thriller—and for the world Claflin and I were both trying to make sense of.

All the Devils Are Here is grim stuff. It’s early Ben Wheatley in tone, merging folk horror with 1990s crime thriller—a kind of Kill List meets Reservoir Dogs. Claflin plays Grady, an antagonistic lead who spirals into madness by dint of his secluded refuge while simultaneously unraveling deeper, more empathetic layers. “I think, especially when someone is so far removed from who you are, there is sort of an enjoyment in the understanding of who and what makes this person tick,” he says.

Claflin is responding to a question about a recent Flaunt interview, where he emphasized entertainment as the performer’s primary role. But we’re horror fans, and Claflin himself is no stranger to the genre—underrated horror revival The Quiet Ones remains one of his earliest roles. Horror entertainment both looks and feels different.

“That’s why we go to the movies, that’s why we put movies on,” he explains. “We want to cut off reality and lean into something that allows us to escape from our own world—or maybe better understand our own world. For me, stepping into Grady’s shoes, I think the character just wants to make the most of life.”

Few, if any, modern performers make nuanced evil look so effortless. Claflin’s crazed, handsome maverick is juxtaposed with a graphic introductory act of violence—jarring, yet narratively key. It’s unpredictable and surprisingly empathetic when Grady ultimately earns the audience’s sympathy. It’s an escape, yes, but one that stretches the boundaries of what entertainment can mean. Claflin refuses to let Grady slip into caricature, and his violence lands harder because of it.

“Finding the laugh was one of the key components, I think, of finding who he was. It was never written that he laughed or anything, but I think out of the accent came this voice, and out of the voice came this sort of animal-like, weasel-like quality, which Barnaby [the director] clung to.” Grady is intoxicating in a Wattpad, fan-fiction kind of way. He’s a bad boy, but Claflin finds not only the humanity—he locates the grim, charismatic humor that makes him work. You know how horror fans have a thing for Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber? It’s kind of like that.

Claflin internally negotiates the role, reconciling his leading-man looks with a character otherwise predisposed toward violence. We don’t discuss it, but Claflin has publicly shared his struggles with body dysmorphic disorder, remarking in The Telegraph last August, “I think it’s only recently dawned on me that I try so hard to make other people happy that I don’t know who I am.” Our bodies do that to us—performers more than most—when the body itself becomes a form of currency.

That discomfort is the engine driving Barnaby Roper’s film: people on the brink, standing before the chasm, wagering whether it’s better to plummet in or hang on. “Grady is so far removed from who I am as a person that finding empathy with someone like that, or understanding the traumas that have led to him being the way that he is, is challenging but so rewarding,” Claflin shares. That’s the crux of it all—understanding. Understanding ourselves, our villains, and, like the characters in the film, this intermediate purgatory state and what, if anything, might pull us out of it.

Claflin seeks refuge in horror much like the rest of us. He recently starred in Bagman and the upcoming series Lazarus. What followed was a private conversation in which Claflin and I shared our grievances about the current state of the world and our evolving roles within it—his from the perspective of an entertainer, mine from that of a culture writer and critic (though maybe I’m giving myself too much credit there).

He’s earnest and honest, unyielding when the questions are too heavy to answer easily. It’s a refreshing transparency—one that likely explains why his performances remain so nuanced. I don’t have easy answers either. We pivot to Jennifer Kent, and Claflin mentions loving The Babadook while being horrified by The Nightingale, in which he starred. (If you haven’t seen The Nightingale, you should.)

I sympathize, largely because I’ve been there myself. Much like the experience of watching All the Devils Are Here, I’m on camera with Claflin, negotiating my own appearance and the way my mind distorts it, wondering whether I’ve refracted myself no differently than Grady has—if only just to survive. “Grady wants everything,” Claflin says. “He wants enjoyment, and he wants to make people feel uncomfortable. He finds comfort in making other people feel uncomfortable.”

Sam Claflin, like the rest of us, is looking ahead. What the future yields is anyone’s guess. I’m not certain of mine, let alone equipped to predict his. He mentions writing and producing as possible future pursuits. There’s comfort, though, in knowing we’ll both be navigating new roles in this world together—his on the big screen for all to see, and mine, perhaps, in reflection of it.

All the Devils Are Here is Available Now on Digital.

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