Upon its release in 2013, The Canyons was unanimously dismissed as a crass erotic thriller with little ambition other than to turn a quick profit, and although a small handful of critics have acknowledged its virtues in the intervening years, the feature is still largely considered the low point of Schrader's body of work. Stephen Rodrick of The New York Times writes that the film “drag[s] endlessly,” and that the prevailing atmosphere is one of “monotony” and “deadness.” Writing for the same publication, Manohla Dargis writes that “Sunset Boulevard is narrated by a corpse; The Canyons is overrun with them,” while Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com complains of the “flatness and tedium,” before declaring it a “micro-budget train wreck.” The reputation of The Canyons is so poor that Chris Knight of the National Post goes as far as to describe 2017's First Reformed as Schrader's “directorial redemption” for his earlier failure. This chapter will work against the grain of the hostility which has dominated the discourse surrounding The Canyons and argue that it is, in fact, an ambitious, nuanced film worthy of deeper consideration. Curiously, the aesthetic strategy of affective disconnect which the majority of critics have bemoaned is key to understanding the themes that Schrader is tackling in the film. The Canyons is a brazen formal experiment which explores alienation in the age of digital surveillance. Its protagonist, Christian (James Deen), is an utterly isolated individual who internalizes the inhuman gaze of the CCTV camera to the extent that he is not only alienated from his peers, but also from his own emotional and phenomenological experience.

Interpreted from this angle, The Canyons reveals itself to be in alignment with Schrader's other, far more esteemed, cinematic portraits of lonely men, such as Taxi Driver (1976, Scorsese), Bringing Out the Dead (1999, Scorsese), Light Sleeper (1992, Schrader), Hardcore (1979, Schrader), American Gigolo (1980, Schrader) and First Reformed. What distinguishes The Canyons from these character studies is that it pointedly denies any sense of transcendence; while Schrader's lonely men typically take a course of action which enables them to ultimately break through their isolation and achieve a higher level of consciousness, Christian lacks any sense of higher purpose and remains stubbornly tethered to a materialistic, secular environment.