Film

First Reformed

Name: First Reformed
Genre: Drama
Released: 2018
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, Cedric the Entertainer, Victoria Hill, Philip Ettinger

Social drama
Very dark
Slow-burning

First Reformed is Paul Schrader's austere, slow-burning study of a small-town pastor whose grief, illness, and a stranger's despair curdle into something closer to zealotry. Shot in stark, boxy frames with almost no music, it's deliberately uncomfortable — a film about faith that refuses easy comfort. Ethan Hawke gives one of his best performances. This is for patient viewers who want cinema that sits with dread rather than resolving it.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love slow, austere character studies where stillness and framing carry as much weight as dialogue, and you want a film that wrestles openly with faith, guilt and despair.

Skip it if you need momentum or plot, since long stretches of quiet, deliberate pacing can feel punishing, and some monologues about faith and the planet lean toward lecture.

What it asks of you: Its 113 minutes unfold at a measured crawl, with long held shots and silences that want your full attention rather than background company.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Calvary2014

Brendan Gleeson plays a priest given a week to live by a parishioner who threatens to kill him, wringing enormous compassion and dark humor out of a crumbling faith facing communal rot, much like Toller's own reckoning.

But Its blend of pitch-black comedy and grief might feel tonally jarring if you want Schrader's total austerity.

Silence2016

Scorsese's punishing epic about Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan asks exactly the question First Reformed does — what does faith cost when God won't answer — at a scale and duration that make the silence itself unbearable.

But Nearly three hours of relentless suffering with little relief; it demands patience some evenings simply won't have.

Taxi Driver1976

Schrader wrote this one too, and Toller's diary narration, insomnia, and slow build toward violent purification are the same engine wearing a clergyman's collar instead of a cabbie's jacket.

But Its 1970s New York grime and De Niro's live-wire performance are a very different register from Hawke's restraint.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from First Reformed

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Diary of a Country Priest1951

Schrader named this Bresson film directly as First Reformed's model — same diary narration, same dying clergyman, same refusal to comfort the audience.

A sickly young priest in rural France writes a diary while his faith and body both fail him — this is the actual blueprint Schrader studied and later wrote a book about, and you can feel every beat of First Reformed already inside it.

But Silent-era pacing, subtitled, and nearly seventy years older; its austerity is even more total than Schrader's.

The Master2012

Paul Thomas Anderson's study of a damaged man drawn into a charismatic belief system shares First Reformed's interest in what desperate people ask religion to fix, and what it can't.

But Deliberately opaque and unresolved; if you wanted answers about Toller, this will frustrate you further.

Doubt2008

Set inside a Catholic institution wrestling with its own moral rot, this two-hander pits Streep against Hoffman and shares First Reformed's interest in certainty curdling into something dangerous.

But Stagier and far more dialogue-driven than First Reformed — it started life as a play, and it shows.

Manchester by the Sea2016

Casey Affleck's grief-frozen performance is the secular cousin of Toller's — a man rebuilding his life around a wound he refuses to name, in a wintry small-town New England setting close to Schrader's own.

But Long, sad, and light on plot momentum; it sits in its ache rather than resolving it.

Nightcrawler2014

Jake Gyllenhaal's nocturnal obsessive burns with the same insomniac, self-justifying intensity as Toller, just aimed at ambition instead of God — a study in a mind convincing itself of its own righteousness.

But It's a thriller first, faith and morality second — don't expect the same spiritual weight.

Leave No Trace2018

Debra Granik's quiet film about a father and daughter living off-grid shares First Reformed's tenderness toward people the world has damaged and its refusal to resolve their pain too easily.

But Gentler and less confrontational — there's no building dread here, just a slow, steady ache.

A Ghost Story2017

Its hushed pace, long static takes, and interest in what outlasts a body echo Schrader's stillness, following a presence caught between this world and whatever comes after it.

But Experimental and slower even than First Reformed at its most demanding; some will find it maddeningly opaque.

Grizzly Man2005

Both are about a man who inherits someone else's obsessive despair and can't put it back down; here the despair is environmental too.

Werner Herzog's documentary about a man who loved grizzly bears to death is, structurally, the story of someone absorbing another person's doomed conviction until it consumes him — exactly what happens to Toller after meeting Michael.

But It's nonfiction with real death at its center, and Herzog's narration is drier and stranger than any of Schrader's dialogue.

The Lighthouse2019

Same interest in a man's body and mind failing together under guilt and isolation, pushed from quiet dread into screaming madness — the genre changes, the wound doesn't.

Two men rot together in isolation, guilt, and possibly divine punishment, shot in the same claustrophobic black-and-white intensity — it takes First Reformed's slow spiritual disintegration and detonates it as full-blown horror.

But Deliberately grotesque and unhinged where First Reformed stays controlled; the shift from restraint to chaos might feel like a betrayal of the mood you came for.