ST. LOUIS — A shepherd and his flock live peacefully in the woods. What can possibly go wrong? Outside of parks and recreational violations, not too much. But this is the movies, where stories about poisonously corrupt leaders and their cults eventually lead to madness and despair.
"The Other Lamb" has shades of "Midsommar" and "The Handmaid's Tale," but lacks the focus and finesse of those films. Where the creators of those films locked you in early on and gave you a substantial payoff, this film meanders and overthinks just about every image shown in the film. Some would mistake that for a chilling embrace of the wicked, but I label it boring and pretentious.
Directed by Malgorzata Szumowska, the film charts out the story of a shepherd (Michel Huisman) and his flock, which happens to be a gathering of women: young, old, and very young. There are the wives and the daughters, and they all adore him like he is indeed The Chosen One. The man can stare longingly into the empty air and appear as stoic as a tree, and that's enough to make the women give birth to his children, cook his lamb, and do just about anything he says.
Around these neck of the woods, a sexual act is the Shepherd choking you with his fingers and gently kissing you on the forehead. Now, if you've seen this all before, it's easy to know that there's always a devoted yet overly curious young girl (Raffey Cassidy) who grows closer to the Shepherd, drawing on the sad tales of an older wife (Denise Gough, the only redeeming aspect of the film) in order to realize who this guy is once and for all.
I don't need to go on, because your mind will put together the rest. The poster and trailer ring enough bells to lay out the path of the finale well before the one hour mark.
What are the good things? Gough offers a haunting portrayal of a woman who knows too much yet has her hands tied. When she's onscreen, the film works well and finds its way. The running time doesn't slow too much, even if much doesn't seem to happen to make you care. All of these characters had a chance to run. The authorities aren't too far away. Cars go by. Who do you truly dig in and care for, because this film needed a compass and Cassidy's Selah isn't it.
The young actress soared in 2018's "Vox Lux" yet couldn't do much to lift up the wretched "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," a film that made my stinker list a few years back. The latter film shares some tonal aspects with "The Other Lamb," a film that just never gets off the ground. Huisman has been good before, but he has little to do here outside of brooding mood pieces in the woods. You almost think he's posing for a painting at times.
I can understand what screenwriter C.S. McMuller and Szumowska were going for; I simply didn't care for it. From the first minute to the last shot, my expression didn't change and I laughed unintentionally way too much for a very serious film. Maybe you'll get roped in and dig its motives, virtues, and meanings. Believing in this film is like taking in what The Shepherd is giving you and saying, "Yum, please give me more." I wasn't a part of that group.
If I were you, I'd avoid this film. Ari Aster's 2019 mind-trip wasn't perfect, but it had Florence Pugh and was more ambitious.
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