Paul Schrader might be one of the great American writer/directors of all time with a slew of classics under his belt like penning Martin Scorsese pictures like “Taxi Driver,” The Last Temptation of Christ.” “Bringing Out the Dead” and helming “Blue Collar,” “Hardcore” and the crime drama “American Gigolo,” but let’s face it, his career has been terribly uneven in the aggregate. Schrader’s been in a huge slump in recent years, but he breaks the curse this year with his latest drama, the towering “First Reformed” which is as if Robert Bresson directed “Taxi Driver”; it’s a spiritual riff on despair, a loss of faith and that kind of spiral into madness.

Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is a solitary, middle-aged parish pastor at a small Dutch Reform church in upstate New York on the cusp of celebrating its 250th anniversary. Once a stop on the Underground Railroad, the church is now a tourist attraction catering to a dwindling congregation, eclipsed by its nearby parent church, Abundant Life, with its state-of-the-art facilities and 5,000-strong flock. When a pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried) asks Reverend Toller to counsel her husband, a radical environmentalist, the clergyman finds himself plunged into his own tormented past, and equally despairing future, until he finds redemption in an act of grandiose violence. From writer-director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver; American Gigolo; Affliction) comes a gripping thriller about a crisis of faith that is at once personal, political, and planetary.

“First Reformed” co-stars Michael Gaston, Cedric the Entertainer, Victoria Hill and opens on May 18 via A24.