by Fiona Underhill, Contributor

Folk horror movies and horror films featuring cults have long overlapped, mainly thanks to the lasting legacy of the hugely influential The Wicker Man (1973). From Children of the Corn (1984) to The Village (2004) and through to A24’s Midsommar (2019) – folk horror movies featuring cults are not going anywhere and in fact, there has been a proliferation of them in the last few years. The great horror director Mary Harron (American Psycho) recently tackled the Manson girls in Charlie Says (2018). One of the best, but unfortunately underseen horror films about a cult, is Malgorzata Szumowska’s The Other Lamb (2019) starring Raffey Cassidy, Michiel Huisman and Denise Gough.

The Other Lamb is deliberately vague about both where and when it is set, which is helped by the fact it has an international cast; with English Cassidy, Dutch Huisman and Irish Gough playing central roles. Its writer, Catherine Smyth-McMullen is Australian and director Szumowska is Polish. The film is a US-Belgian-Irish co-production and it was filmed in County Wicklow, Ireland, but appears to be set in the US. Rural settings, and especially forests, are a common feature of folk horror films, with woods being associated with fairytales, myths and magic. Isolation from civilization also helps cults indulge in their strange rituals, away from prying eyes.

The cult in The Other Lamb is made up of girls and young women, known as daughters/sisters (who wear blue) and adult women, known as wives (who wear purple/red) and their leader is The Shepherd (Huisman). They survive in shacks in the woods, living off the land. When the girls and women, including Selah (Cassidy) menstruate, they must go to a shack a long way from the rest of the dwellings because they are “impure and unclean.” Sarah (Gough), an ostracized member of the cult, reluctantly hosts them during this time. The Shepherd fathers children with the women (and it is implied that this starts when they are young) and if the baby happens to be a boy, it is ‘dealt with.’ There is also an implication that once his biological daughters reach a certain age, the cycle starts again, so incest and abuse are baked into this cult. Because they are living primitively and The Shepherd won’t allow them to access modern medical care, the women (including Selah’s mother) often die in childbirth. The Shepherd is obsessed with people being “broken things” and this is how he views Sarah, the rebellious ‘wife.’ 

The cinematography of the beautiful, but harsh and sparse landscape is one of The Other Lamb’s greatest strengths, with the vivid indigo and magenta dresses on the women like jewels dotting the frame. The cult gathers in a clearing in the forest for worship, which has white thread stretching from tree to tree and the women wear white while in this space – an extension of The Shepherd’s obsession with purity. While the ‘sacrificial lamb’ metaphor may be a little heavy-handed, Huisman (who also played a cult member in Karyn Kusama’s great 2015 film The Invitation) uses his eyes with effectively creepy focus when The Shepherd zeroes in on his next prey. His level of control extends to shoving his fingers in the women’s mouths, which is just one of the terrifying ways he physically and mentally dominates them. His totalitarianism also extends to a ban on story-telling – The Shepherd must dictate the narrative at all times. He pits the women against one another, so they are always competing for his ‘grace’ to fall upon them.

Cassidy’s central performance in The Other Lamb is hugely compelling – at the start we see her beatific expression as Selah basks in The Shepherd’s glow as a favorite daughter. But as the cult are forced to move, in search of a lake that The Shepherd calls ‘Eden’ and she discovers more uncomfortable truths from Sarah, Selah starts to have doubts about their leader. One of the most fascinating scenes occurs while they are travelling – Selah sees a car pass by on the road and imagines herself in it – as a normal make-up-wearing, music-listening, friend-having teenager. The image is fleeting and one that Selah cannot fully grasp, a tease of a life she could be leading, if she were allowed to be the protagonist of her own story. Similarly to The Village, glimpses of the ‘real’ world (which here mainly comes in the form of the police) are jarring and jolt the audience out of the world we think we are in. We become aware of how deeply immersed the cult is in their own insular lives and how cut off from modern society they are.

Blood and sheep are two of the recurring motifs in The Other Lamb and they sometimes come together - in images of a mauled lamb that was under Selah’s care on a remote hillside and a lamb sacrificed during one of the cult’s ceremonies. Selah’s nightmarish visions – of things rotting in the forest or on the mountains and of her fear of menstruation – cannot compete with the real-life hell of these women’s lives. [Spoilers] The Shepherd’s final monstrous act can only be met with one that is more monstrous and perhaps by Selah usurping their leader. The Shepherd becomes the sacrificial ram and perhaps gets his wish – to be a crucified messiah.

While the allegory of The Other Lamb is not exactly subtle or complex, the film is elevated by its costume design, cinematography by Michal Englert and the performances by Cassidy, Huisman and Gough. It’s an atmospheric folk horror in which the fear of the hostile environment and any kind of spiritual threat is nothing compared to the very real threat that a man can pose to the women around him. At one point, Sarah spits The Shepherd’s real and very normal name – Michael – at him with disgust, briefly stripping him of his power. Ultimately it is not the robes or the rituals that instill fear, but just a horny man exploiting vulnerable young women to his own advantage and taking his messiah complex to a horrifying conclusion. But Selah’s fortitude (instilled by Sarah) ensures that there is some salvation to be found…

The Other Lamb is available on Hulu.