Delayed Reaction: The Other Lamb

Premise: A woman in a cult comes to be suspicious of her messiah’s claims of power.

 

I'm getting a little bored of cult movies. When was the last time one of these movies went in a surprising direction? Maybe The Endless. It's the same thing over and over. The leader is a con-man who uses his power to sleep with the young women. Don't get me wrong. I think that does happen, but I see the same kind of cult story again and again. The Other Lamb is a decent movie. The horror undertones are a nice addition, but I could write a lot of the movie 10 minutes in. Michel Huisman has greater claims of power than he can prove. He's divided his female-only followers into sisters and wives. Of course there will be a rebellion.

 

I have a number of questions about how this cult came to be. How long has it been going? Huisman is still in his 30s when this came out, so it couldn't be that long. He's fully brainwashed these women though. It's not possible for Raffey Cassidy to be his daughter, right? And how well do the sisters actually remember the real world? I'm not convinced that Huisman could've put together a cult this strong. More followers would've questioned things earlier. And that gets it the way of the rest of my enjoyment of the movie.

 

As I said though, I do like how it's a soft-horror movie. It's more bleak than scary. Raffey Cassidy has some unsettling visions. There's a grimness to seeing the dead bodies unsentimentally laid out or floating. I like that it's not constantly trying to force a response from the audience with a jump scare. I do think it fails to move from bleak to creepy though, which is a missed opportunity.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend