phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2020

The Other Lamb



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 36min
Country: Ireland, Belgium, USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Drama, Horror
Plot Summary: A girl born into an all-female cult led by a man in their compound begins to question his teachings and her own reality.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Slow burn that doesn't light much of a fire. Visually stunning, but ultimately the feminist storytelling doesn't have much to offer other than "men are the worst," which horror fans are already well aware of.


Outside Reviews:

Monica Castillo
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

As wonderful as The Other Lamb appears on screen and its cast embodies the story's tension, it feels as if there is something missing from the final picture. The movie is slight in its exploration of dark subjects like cults, inter-generational dynamics and abuse, without coming to any kind of conclusion or closure. After following Selah through this self-discovery, the ending feels rushed and not as satisfying as the majority of the movie before it. Still, most of the movie keeps up the narrative suspense against a gorgeous but bleak minimalistic backdrop of rainy, windswept mountains once the group is uprooted from their camp - making Selah's journey both physical and psychological. That's enough to make me anticipate Szumowska's next adventure.


A.A. Dowd
Grade: B- - There's a touch of fairy-tale Antichrist spookiness to the cult drama The Other Lamb

The Other Lamb, the English-language debut of Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska (Elles), unfolds almost entirely from Selah's perspective, blinkered until it isn't. When not locking in close on the burning intensity of her gaze, it's warping the reality of the world through her eyes, via visions of watery doom, nightmares of dead animals, and the way the wilderness itself seems to bend and stretch, leafless trees sloping at odd angles like something out of a grim (or Grimm) fairy tale. Szumowska made a name for herself as a producer on Lars von Trier's Antichrist, and there's a bit of that provocation's doom-and-gloom unreality in the painterly sprawl of the movie's backwoods backdrop.