7/13/20 - The Other Lamb (2020) - 5+/10

Beautiful cinematography: angelic faces, desolate landscapes, and stark colors. Unfortunately, the story is too opaque, dripping with metaphor and pointed blatant symbology but adrift in tone and momentum. Lovely to look at but mildly grueling to see. It is short, but feels long, as it grinds along with inaction and maddening subtleties. It is supposed to feel like a slithering creep but while the horror elements (the editing, imagery, psychological fritz, and score) pockmark this tableau, it misses the connecting resin of a well composed portrait.

Again, it looks exquisite and conceptually it is rife with possibilities. I love the emphasis on the female experience and presence, but that isn’t enough to outweigh the tedious, blurred, and unfulfilled totality that persists. The actresses, especially Raffey Cassidy, are pitch perfect and entrancing, but the story lacks the unerring evolution that it needed to take itself from gorgeous clay to a gratifying carving full of doom and earned denouement.