The Revival (2017)

What makes The Revival linger is the way it turns a familiar small-town setting into a pressure cooker of faith, desire, and reputation, where every hymn and handshake feels charged with something unsaid. Jennifer Gerber directs with a clear-eyed tenderness that never mocks belief or sensationalizes longing, letting the drama build in quiet looks and brittle silences until it becomes impossible to ignore. David Rysdahl and Zachary Booth are terrific together, giving the preacher and the drifter a chemistry that’s as aching as it is dangerous, while the script keeps the moral knots tight without preaching at you. It’s a lean, potent film that can be unsettling—especially if you’re sensitive to religious hypocrisy and bursts of violence—but if you want a romance-tinged drama with real bite and human contradiction, it’s absolutely worth your time.

The Revival is clearly aiming for a slow-burn Southern gothic drama about faith, hypocrisy, and forbidden desire colliding in a small-town church, and it does have a strong central premise with committed performances. The problem is the execution: it often feels more like a sequence of grim, provocative beats than a fully earned emotional journey, so the big turns can land as manipulative instead of inevitable. If you’re looking for a nuanced romance or a thoughtful, balanced take on religion and sexuality, this may frustrate you with its heavy-handed choices and bleak trajectory. That said, if you can handle uncomfortable subject matter and you’re in the mood for a moody, intimate character piece that prioritizes tension over subtlety, there’s enough atmosphere and acting to keep you watching.