Well, Mary certainly did have a little lamb, but I don’t think its fleece was ever white as snow. Not this lamb anyway. Something trending lately has been taking innocent childhood themes and stories and making them into grotesque caricatures that have zero reason for existing.
CineDump Rating: ★
I could understand from a filmmaker’s point of view how this would seem fun to dive into if it were a short film. But this agonizing feature-length adaptation (if you can even call it that) of the titular nursery rhyme should be taught in film schools how not to approach certain concepts.
A group of cold case true crime podcasters, about to lose their job, embark on a last-ditch effort to investigate a string of missing people with the hope of saving their careers. This leads them to little old Mary (the only believable performance given by a truly creepy Christine Anne Nyland) and her mysterious and reclusive son, whom she refers to simply as her “little lamb.” And that’s about it. The rest is just murder by a lamb-faced hulk of a butcher.
Everything is run of the mill. The characters are drab and flat, the kills are cheatingly off-screen, and I could be wrong but I think we’re supposed to care for the lead actress. I certainly did not.
The only aspect of this film I cared for was Vince Knight’s cinematography, which in any other movie could have made this a decent monster flick. Instead, it seems like Humpty Dumpty fell right off his wall and onto this film, making it one giant mess. If you want a lamb-themed horror, stick to Iceland’s 2021 film, “Lamb.”
Jacob Scheer