Release: Dust Saint

 

Dust Saint

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Director: Rose Glass

Writer: Holden Abbott

Cast: Paul Dano, Jessie Buckley, Nell Fisher, John Hawkes

Budget: $20,000,000

Domestic Box Office: $14,100,200

Foreign Box Office: $12,696,772

Total Profit: -$15,142,454

Reaction: Writer Holden Abbott's LRF career is off to a strong critical start, but unfortunately not as strong of a stop at the box office with his first two films.

"In Dust Saint, Rose Glass expertly applies her knack for creating disturbing atmospheres to the vast, isolating western landscapes. However, I came away most impressed with writer Holden Abbott's sparse approach to telling this story, crafting dread through absence. The accidental false prophet narrative felt fresh and the script itself felt like something we've never seen in LRF before - an increasingly rare feat 35+ seasons in." - Cal Crowe, Washington Globe

"Rose Glass's Dust Saint is anchored by a career-best performance from Paul Dano who delivers an early GRA-contending performance in what turns out to be a stark, punishing drama. The film's ambiguity and final act refuse to comfort the audience, instead leaving things justifiably bleak." - Evan Kane, Buffalo News

"Dust Saint is the kind of slow-burn nightmare that lives more in mood than plot, and Rose Glass clearly knows how to make belief feel suffocating. Paul Dano is excellent at projecting a man collapsing under the weight of accidental myth-making, while Jessie Buckley’s calm, weaponized devotion is the film’s quiet engine of dread. It occasionally mistakes solemnity for depth and leans hard on ambiguity as a catch-all, but when it works, Dust Saint taps into something genuinely unsettling." - Mark Rawls, Seattle Times

Rated R for violence and thematic material