‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ Review: There are No Movies Like This

BY NATE DAY

Cutting right to the chase here: There are no movies like Mona Fastvold’s ‘The Testament of Ann Lee.’

Nearly every descriptor you could apply to this film comes with an asterisk. It’s a full-tilt musical, yet it never drifts from its grounded narrative, as if the characters themselves are simply living inside song. It’s a historically accurate biopic of a religious leader, but a great deal of the history is, as Fastvold has admitted, “imagined” because of how poorly documented Ann Lee’s life was. It’s a cult drama with little sense of danger or evil. Fastvold and company approach Ann Lee and her followers with genuine reverence, depicting a largely progressive and non-intrusive belief system – save for one glaring requirement of membership. Even some of the asterisks have asterisks.

While this may read on paper like a messy basket full of contradictions, I can assure you, it’s not. This is a tender snapshot – albeit an epic one – of Ann Lee and her community, rather than a sermon or manifesto about their beliefs. The film feels layered, honest, and balanced because Ann Lee and her followers embodied those same qualities.

                  Amanda Seyfreid in 'The Testament of Ann Lee,' Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Amanda Seyfried offers a titanic performance as the titular cult leader, a religious figure who believed herself to be the second coming of Jesus Christ and led her followers in worship by song, dance and, perhaps most importantly, abstinence. Seyfried juggles singing, dancing, and acting with her usual precision, but here she also wields the commanding confidence of an effective cult leader. She gives birth four times on screen, loses those four children, and reaches a state of spiritual transcendence that borders on psychosis. She traverses the full spectrum of human emotion while making you fall so deeply in love with Ann Lee that you’re willing to forgive her forceful obsession with celibacy – the one belief that nudges her movement into uncomfortable territory. Truly, what Seyfried has done here is one of the century’s great performances – it’s a shame that she wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for it, but perhaps that’s an indicator that some audience members were unsettled by such a non-traditional piece of filmmaking.

In concert with Seyfried is Daniel Blumberg’s enchanting, naturalistic score. The music soars seamlessly from hymnal dance numbers to moments of emotional tenderness, never breaking into songs in the traditional musical sense. Similarly, choreography from Celia Rowlson-Hall balances beautifully the lofty idealism of cults with the passionate and overwhelming worship of its members.

Further setting ‘Ann Lee’ apart from other films is its script, written by Fastvold and Brady Corbet, her partner in marriage and creative endeavors. They don’t shy away from the remarkable qualities of Ann Lee and her movement in order to condemn religious zealotry as many storytellers might, but instead, they examine the way this (largely) unobtrusive belief system benefited from some of the same historical fallacies that other, much more dangerous cults would take advantage of in the future. This allows them to tell a grounded story about a truly bizarre slice of history that has been all but scrubbed from the zeitgeist of Christianity.

                                                    Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ is, undoubtedly, an arthouse film—don’t let its epic scale or marketing fool you. While I’d never discourage audiences from embracing unconventional work like this, it’s worth noting that this is far from a typical moviegoing experience. I found the movie to be transcendent, but those less acquainted with Fastvold’s fast and loose ideas of film structure may find this an odd watch, given it’s being pushed as a historical cult drama with a movie star at its center.

Ultimately, ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ is one of the great cinematic triumphs of 2025 for reasons that are difficult to articulate beyond what you’ve read so far. It also pushes the boundaries of what cinema can be – a boldly healing idea for an industry increasingly defined by formula and box-checking over risk and artistic ambition.