Movie Review: KILLING FAITH

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 3rd, 2025 / 01:01 AM

KILLING FAITH movie poster | ©2025 Shout! Studios

Rating: R
Stars: Guy Pearce, DeWanda Wise, Jack Alcott, Bill Pullman, Emily Ford, Raoul Max Trujillo, Jamie Neumann, Joanna Cassidy
Writer: Ned Crowley, story by Ned Crowley & David Martin
Director: Ned Crowley
Distributor: Shout Studios
Release Date: October 3, 2025

KILLING FAITH is set in the American West of 1849. A woman’s voiceover tells us of a cross-species plague that has killed humans and animals alike. The region is just beginning to recover, but in one small town, the citizens are terrified of a silent little white girl (Emily Ford).

This is because the child’s touch transmits the plague, but unlike with the original illness, the lethal results are immediate. Although the girl’s mother, the formerly enslaved Black farmer Sarah (DeWanda Wise), keeps the child’s hands in mittens, accidents happen.

Meanwhile, the town’s doctor, perpetually drunken Bender (Guy Pearce), has worn out his welcome and is told he has only a day to get beyond the city limits.

Sarah makes up her mind to seek salvation across state lines, where a preacher named Ross (Bill Pullman) is said to be able to provide miraculous cures with the laying-on of hands. Perhaps he can cure the child of whatever makes her so dangerous.

Bender scoffs at the notion of faith healing (or God, for that matter). He initially declines Sarah’s request to accompany her and her daughter, but her offer of money and his need to leave lead him to accept. The little group is filled out by Sarah’s young, chatty and somewhat daft farmhand Edward (Jack Alcott).

Together, the band faces a variety of dangers on the road, with lots of twists and turns.

Writer/director Ned Crowley, who crafted the story with David Martin, packs a lot of mini-mysteries (what do these bandits really want, where did this guy come from, who are those people) into the narrative. There is more to the back stories of Sarah, Bender and even Edward than we first suspect. The desert, dotted with oases and bleak barren stretches, makes for an optically shifting canvas, so that we’re not beset by a sense of sameness. Overall, it’s a good horror adventure.

Wise is firm, impassioned and projects the kind of determination that makes us believe Sarah is up to tackling just about anything. When she despairs, we mourn. Pearce is deft with all aspects of Bender, from complete sot to sobered-up cynic to someone at least able to seek (if not find) purpose. Alcott makes Edward seem like someone we might know, good-hearted and fascinated by the world, even if he’s not tremendously sensible. Young Ford is alternately adorable and otherworldly.

Pullman hits all the right notes as the enigmatic Ross, and Raoul Max Trujillo, Jamie Neumann, and Joanna Cassidy all grab our attention as other travelers.

Where KILLING FAITH wanders in circles a bit is in the debates (mostly) between Sarah and Bender over spiritual belief and related topics. We appreciate that this is broadly a common difference of opinion between both individuals and sections of society, past and present.

The trouble with this specific dialogue is that it feels broad, with neither side saying anything that feels like a new, or at least newly-phrased, observation. The title suggests that faith and its loss are going to drive the story in a way that they don’t. This is hardly a failing in itself, but it sets up expectations that may cause us to misinterpret some of what we’re seeing as we try to make it fit with “killing faith.”

The denouement of KILLING FAITH hints that all of this theological wrangling may have been beside the point. That’s fair enough. However, if that’s the case, it seems like there ought to have been a little more build-up to what we ultimately get.

KILLING FAITH is one of those odysseys where the path matters as much as the destination. Since it keeps us intrigued throughout and doesn’t try to make a case for anything objectionable, we can’t quarrel overmuch with its methods.

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