Direction: Mona Festvold
Country: UK / USA
From Norwegian filmmaker Mona Festvold (The Sleepwalker, 2014; The World to Come, 2020), The Testament of Ann Lee explores the life of the leader and founder of the Shakers, an 18th-century British religious sect, through frenzied songs and dances that attempt to capture the feverish worship of its believers. Ominously introduced through music and movement—set to a score by The Brutalist composer Daniel Blumberg—the film gradually loses momentum, becoming painfully dragging.
Despite its decent premise, this exploitative mystery leaves much to be desired, with Fastvold knowing exactly where to put the camera but losing control over how long to let it roll. The result is a repetitive execution that struggles to evoke genuine chills, no matter how insistently it tries.
Completely missing the mark on the emotional side, The Testament of Ann Lee ultimately fails to resonate—I neither enjoyed it nor found it to offer anything particularly meaningful. It feels like a film more interested in exhibiting pain than in understanding it, weighed down by extended musical sequences that stall an already unsatisfying narrative. One might even call it an ambitious misfire, lost within its own artistic formula.
