BFI London Film Festival 2025 | Movie Review: "The Testament of Ann Lee" Is A Stirring Success with One Critical Misstep

The Testament Of Ann Lee is Amanda Seyfried’s ‘Revenge Dress’; after missing out on the role of Glinda in the movie adaptation of Wicked - a role for which she openly campaigned for near-enough a decade - she pulled up her bootstraps and went into production for this brooding musical extravaganza instead. And good for her, because, despite some authenticity errors, mesmerizing musical numbers and impressive technical prowess make this endevour mostly a success.

Seyfried plays the real-life Ann Lee, the founder and perpetrator of a religious movement in the 18th century which placed her as the second coming of Christ. Lee’s religious mania begins in a state of mourning after the tragic death of all four of her children before growing grotesquely like a cancer, eventually spanning multiple continents and decades. It’s a gripping depiction of how blindly people can follow a movement, of how rapturously they can allow themselves to be swept up into something just to excuse the difficulties of their life. 

And Seyfried is very good in the role - except for one fatal flaw. Ann Lee was from Manchester, UK, and thus the role necessitates that very specific and particular accent; Seyfried does not succeed. Instead, her accent takes us on a Grand Tour of the British Isles. Touches of Geordie, Scouse, Scottish, Irish and RP can be found in her delivery, as well as her own native American, but she never conquers the accent properly. It’s genuinely a shame, because in every other aspect her performance is consuming and mighty, a once-in-a-lifetime, full-bodied depiction of religious consumption. It’s the role she was born to play, the apex of her best qualities; tender and sweet, but with a bubbling undercurrent of ferocity. 

And to give credit to Seyfried, she isn’t the only Accent Criminal in the cast. Looking at the cast, it takes until the seventh person listed to find a Brit, let alone a Mancunian. The movie is filled with Americans, and across the board no one truly nails it. For a story that is set largely in the North of England, things never feel authentically Mancunian. It unshackles the film from reality, the locations suddenly feeling set-like, the performances feeling like, well, performances. The age-old tradition of surrounding the A Lister with thespians of British theatre and television has not been utilised here, and the repercussions are damaging to the film as a whole. 

Accents aside, the film is very watchable. Like The Brutalist which director Mona Fastvold co-wrote, The Testament of Ann Lee horrifies and engrosses in equal measure. The craftsmanship across the board is exquisite, with gorgeous cinematography and fantastically lived-in costumes. The musical numbers are utterly hypnotic; the film is at its best and feels most alive during the moments of worship. They're unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, bodies and limbs hideously twisting, interlocking and stomping to haunting hymns. It’s a fascinating and disturbing depiction of religious psychosis.

And so, as Seyfried’s ‘Revenge Dress’, was the entire project worth it? It’s tempting to imagine the film with a few more Britishisms instilled into its fabric - perhaps a Brit in the central role, or at the very least a supporting cast of legitimate Mancunians. But aside from that, yes, The Testament Of Ann Lee is worth your time. The filmmaking is sublime, and a tale which depicts the dangers of thousands upon thousands of people abandoning all sense of reality centred around the supposed charisma of a singular central figure - well, let’s just say that 2025 is a good year for that message to be delivered.