The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

Hymns, Hysteria, and Hard Questions - The Testament of Ann Lee review by griggs

Some films want to tell you a story. This one wants to whip you into a frenzy, then quiz you afterwards.

The Testament of Ann Lee makes its Shaker founder both prophet and problem: a woman preaching gender and social equality while asking her flock to surrender to a vision. It plays like Suspiria spliced with Eggers’ The Witch — a folk-horror musical where devotion feels less like comfort than pressure. The images are bold, the gestures bigger than life, and the mood is thick enough to cut with a hymn book.

Amanda Seyfried goes fierce and unvarnished, and Thomasin McKenzie and Lewis Pullman help the community feel lived-in. But the connective tissue can be thin: scenes crest, then drift, and the film doesn’t always tighten its grip when it needs to. Gorgeous, fascinating… and just a little short on payoff.