First Reformed

There is a specific, suffocating stillness that opens First Reformed. Most modern movies are terrified of silence; they fill every gap with a needle-drop or a quip to make sure you haven’t checked your phone. But Paul Schrader (the man who gave us the grit of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) decides to trap us in a box. Literally. He shot this film in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio—that square-ish format from the early days of cinema—and it makes the screen feel like a tightening vice. It’s a bold, "anti-blockbuster" move that tells you exactly what kind of ride you’re in for: one where there is nowhere to hide.

I watched this for the third time last Tuesday while my neighbor was power-washing his driveway. That aggressive, mechanical humming outside my window provided a weirdly perfect soundtrack for a film that feels like a slow-motion panic attack.

A Career-Defining Crisis

At the center of the frame is Ethan Hawke as Pastor Ernst Toller. Now, I’ve been a Hawke apologist since the Before trilogy, but what he does here is on another level. He plays Toller with a hollowed-out intensity, a man who is literally drinking himself into a state of spiritual transparency. He’s the caretaker of "First Reformed," a historic "souvenir shop" of a church in upstate New York that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

The plot kicks in when Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant parishioner, asks Toller to counsel her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger). Michael is an environmental radical who is so paralyzed by climate despair that he doesn't want to bring a child into a dying world. It’s a conversation that acts as a virus. Toller, already grieving the loss of his son and the collapse of his marriage, catches Michael’s "sickness." He begins to realize that while he’s been praying for souls, the actual planet is being sold off to the highest bidder—specifically by the corporate donors who fund the local megachurch, "Abundant Life."

The Corporate Cross

Speaking of megachurches, we have to talk about Cedric the Entertainer. Casting a legendary comedian as a polished, middle-management man of God was a stroke of genius. As Pastor Joel Jeffers, he isn't a villain; he’s just a pragmatist. He represents the modern, sanitized version of faith that fits neatly into a PowerPoint presentation. The scenes between him and Hawke are some of the best written dialogue of the last decade. Watching them clash is like watching a cathedral try to argue with a shopping mall.

This is where the "Contemporary Cinema" of it all really bites. First Reformed doesn’t feel like a period piece or a dusty theological exercise. It feels like 2 a.m. on Twitter. It captures that specific 21st-century anxiety where you realize the institutions meant to protect us—be they religious, political, or environmental—are mostly just expensive PR firms for billionaires. Michael Gaston, playing the industrialist Edward Balq, plays the "reasonable" corporate monster with a chilling, glad-handing efficiency that feels ripped from a modern earnings call.

Behind the Low-Budget Altar

What’s wild is that this film looks like a million bucks (well, way more than its $3.5 million budget). Schrader was inspired by the "transcendental style" of European directors like Robert Bresson, but he had to make it on an indie hustle. They shot the whole thing in just 20 days around Queens and Long Island. That "Abundant Life" megachurch? That’s a real church in New York that probably didn't realize they were being used as a critique of their own business model.

Schrader actually wrote the script after a conversation with a critic about Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, realizing he finally had the "courage" to write a film about spirituality. It’s a "passion project" in the truest sense—a veteran filmmaker returning to his roots (he was raised in a strict Calvinist household) to ask: Can a man be too woke for his own sanity?

The film moves with a deliberate, chilly grace until the final act, where it suddenly takes a hard left turn into something surreal and terrifying. It’s a tonal shift that would have failed in the hands of a lesser director, but here, it feels like a fever breaking.

This is the kind of movie that follows you into the kitchen while you’re making a sandwich afterward. It’s a drama that uses the bones of a thriller to ask the most uncomfortable question of our current moment: Will God forgive us for what we’re doing to His creation? Even if you aren't religious, the film’s exploration of isolation and radicalization is undeniably potent. It’s a lean, mean, 113-minute gut-punch that proves you don't need a $200 million budget to create a cinematic universe—you just need a man in a room, a bottle of whiskey, and a terrifyingly relevant idea.