The Testament of Ann Lee

• Directed by Mona Fastvold
• September 1, 2025 (Venice) / December 25, 2025 (US) / February 27, 2026 (UK)

The founding leader of the Shaker Movement is proclaimed as the female Christ and sets out to establish a utopian society where all members worship through song and dance.

I went into The Testament of Ann Lee with a little hesitation. My first concern was I heard that this was a musical. In my youth I was not a fan of musicals but have since changed though I do tend to favor older ones over newer ones. Second is that the days of films being tolerant towards religion are over and my fear this would be a long slog because it would force opportunities to make jabs over telling a good story.

The tagline is ‘Based on a true legend’ so my guess is broad facts MIGHT BE accurate but between stylization and (too long before they start) musical elements it would only be slightly less fiction than the latest FF movie. Shakers are something few know and fewer still know much of.

While it is a bit of a musical, it takes nearly 45 minutes before we get the first element of what one would think of close to a proper musical. Before that director (and co-writer) Mona Fastvold confuses religious services/celebrations or the humming of hymns for being a musical. I was thinking the description of it as a ‘musical’ would be some incorrect use of terminology.

As I had believed there are definitely occasions where this makes statements on religion. Shakers and by extension Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) are used to stand in for all groups and their leaders. The longer the film runs the more the movie tries to make the Shaker services look weird leading me to think Fastvold and co-writer Brady Corbet have no experience with religion. It can be a fine line between ‘weird’ and ‘different.’

There is the heavy-handed statement that God is trans/non-binary issued several times though in those instances they use era appropriate language. It felt unnecessary and more like a statement aimed at the religious to say a devout group believed this modern, secular thing. Shakers were much more known in their time for equality of the sexes yet beyond Ann Lee that was largely ignored in The Testament of Ann Lee.

I enjoyed this much more as a drama than as a musical. That is mostly because it could not quite commit to being a musical OR a drama. It more dipped its toes into either genre. That and as the film continued on it became more about the weirdness/unusual nature of the Shakers over being a musical or drama while also feeling like the filmmaker was holding back feelings over religion. Go big or go home!

One cannot escape how The Testament of Ann Lee connects to sex or rather the aversion to it. I guess you could even call it extreme abstinence. Ann Lee is married as are many other people in her group with others in the group as children maturing and becoming aware of the opposite sex. There are two points where they become a little more graphic than necessary in my opinion. Not against sex scenes when they help tell the story, but it was enough to see a man and woman sneak off or Ann Lee’s husband William (Lewis Pullman) take up with a new woman. We didn’t need to see anybody riding anybody or William’s command of fellatio to the new bride. Just because you can show something doesn’t mean you should.

There is a narrator present to shorten the length of the movie and state events between scenes. This left me a little confused on where some characters come from. Like where exactly did Tim Blake Nelson as Pastor Reuben Wright come from? Was he the guy that waggled his finger into the field where they decided to build?

The Testament of Ann Lee was an enjoyable bit of modern filmmaking. While it had trouble deciding what exactly it wanted to be it still managed to be entertaining.