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Screenwriter Catherine S. McMullen sat down on a Sunday morning in Melbourne with a fresh cup of coffee and her cat to chat with HGL about her first feature film, The Other Lamb, a mystic, cultist fable about isolation, abuse, and empowerment. Catherine has been writing since she was a child, her father being a Science Fiction writer himself, and loves working in genre films and television. She will be contributing to quite a few impactful stories in the future.
HGL: We talked about Pan’s Labyrinth and Labyrinth as inspirations. Tell me about how The Other Lamb came to be in your brain and onto the page.
Catherine: So, I’m obsessed with cults. I think I was always fascinated by the intersection of faith and personality. I completely get why people join cults. Cause it gives you the certainty of, if I do this thing and I’m with this person, and I do everything right, everything will be okay, whether it’s in this life or the next, and I don’t have any of that kind of certainty, so I completely get it.
I was writing prose at the time. I think it was maybe in 2014 or 2015. I wrote a short story called “The Other Faced Lamb.” The other lamb is from the Bible. I adopted it a little bit, but it’s very different. It was about a girl that was raised in a cult.
It was all set in Australia. It got published in one of our magazines, and I kind of forgot about it. Generally, when I write something, I have something I want to say. It’s almost like an exorcism. It’s rare I return to an idea. And then a couple of years later, I started to move more into screenwriting. I was working in film and TV, and I just think there was something there. No one was really reading my stuff. I ended up winning an award from the States.
HGL: Was that for The Other Lamb?
Catherine: It was for my pilot called Living Metal. It was this really specific award called Sir Peter Ustinov Award from the International Emmys. It’s for screenwriters and non-American for pilot, under 30.
I went to New York, and I met my managers through some mutual friends in Australia. They read my pilots and liked them. And then they read The Other Lamb and said, this is an amazing sample. Let’s start setting up meetings and all that kind of stuff.
That was what people read for my general meetings. I met with my producers, Rumble, and I walked into the meeting thinking it was a general and they asked, ‘so is this available?’ And that kind of kicked it off. It was incredibly fast for features. I think it was three years in one month. Which for features is so, so fast.
HGL: When did you find out Malgorzata [Szumowska] was attached?
Catherine: Stephanie [C.M. Development Producer] and I met and we did a few passes on the script. She made me aware very early on, which is probably the most obvious change that, that they had experience filming in Ireland and they had relationships there, so we changed it. I was very, very lucky. I have an Irish passport, so I do actually have a connection to Ireland. I’d started thinking about how to adapt the script to European setting.
The producers had Malgo on their radar for ages and sent her various scripts. She was starting to think about working in America. She’s just an incredible filmmaker. A lot of her movies are looking at femininity and religion, and kind of moving away from religion. And so she just read The Other Lamb and really connected with the themes, which is what you hope for when a director reads your script!
HGL: Yeah! I notice most of the features she’s done she’s written herself.
Catherine: Yeah, yeah. This is her first English language feature, the first time she’s directed something she hasn’t co-written. Everything else she’s done has been in Polish. When you’re a foreigner, even for me as an Australian breaking to America. The American system is different, and especially so when English is your second language. So, I think she knew that for her first English language film, it would probably have to be something that someone else had written.
HGL: The question I always have is how much of what we’re seeing on screen was on the page, and how much of it was developed or changed for the screen?
Catherine: The core story is 100% the same. A girl is faithful and then through a traumatic experience stops to like question the bounds of her world and whether or not it’s the right way. That’s always been key from the short story.
In terms of what you literally see on screen in the script, I’d say it’s probably 90%. I love dialogue. I write quite a lot of dialogue, but, you don’t always need to. Sometimes, with a good enough actor and good enough director, you can get across that thing you were trying to say with a look or a quick touch. I feel really lucky as a writer that it stayed so similar really.
I’m really glad the film kept with these moments of explanation, where it’s like, “Oh, when I joined…” But I really strongly never wanted the moment where the backstory was completely explained.
HGL: And that story has been told, I think.
Catherine: Yeah, exactly. It’s like, it’s this dude and, oh my god, Jesus has started to say he should sleep with the women. I’ve seen that. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in why people stay and how people leave. And what matters is the why and how you leave. That’s interesting. I’ve seen a few articles describe it as a cult in decline, and I think that’s a really perfect way of saying it.
The main thing is Malgo. I mean, you’ve seen the film, it’s use of landscape and color and, and you know, that’s with the cinematographer as well.
HGL: The costume design and the use of color was so captivating. There is so much unspoken, so it’s very nice to hear 90% of the script is there.
Catherine: It’s such a beautiful example of how really talented professionals elevate writer’s words so much. And I love the colors that they chose and I love them segregating out the wives and the daughters. It’s completely the costume designer. And then there are these beautiful strings that runs through the trees. I had pieces of wool written into the script where it was leading people places, but there’s this moment where they’re worshiping, and that was originally pews, like an outdoor church. And when I saw what they’d done, it was so much better. That’s what a good production designer can bring to it. As a writer, you give them a blueprint, and then people build something amazing with it.
HGL: I definitely think that happened here. You had touched on something, and it was a question that I had. There are a lot of unanswered questions in the film, not just of how everything came to be, but I know one question that I had that was kind of answered, but not fully, was what happens if the moms have boys?
Catherine: The boys one, I think it’s kind of answered in the film, but like…it’s the answer you think it is [Laughing]. It’s not a big mystery.
HGL: It’s a wonderful moment where you can see exactly how ruthless The Shepard can be, but up until that moment, it’s not really shown. It’s all done in insinuation. And I just like, are those things that you thought about and have answers to, as the writer and creator? Not that I want you to give the answers.
Catherine: It was. In a really early draft, had him doing something like beating someone within the first 15 pages. And then the director and my development executive, I think they’re 100% right, said you want to save the good and then shift to bad. That was a really smart choice. It’s very clearly an allegory for abuse and control. Abusers don’t stop. I wanted the audience to be lulled into that sense of it, as well. Like, oh, is he that bad? Maybe that isn’t this story. You know, obviously it is, but that’s real life.
HGL: In the viewing experience, I had those questions too, like, is this the film I thought I was going to be watching in those first 30 minutes, and I think a lot of that is Selah, and how devoted she is, and how much she gives herself over to that. Touch on the development of her character, because I think she’s so compelling throughout the course of her journey. It’s different than I think things we’ve seen in other cult movies.
Catherine: There are only so many kind of stories you can tell within a cult. Either you’re telling someone being drawn into it, you’re telling someone in it, or you’re telling someone getting out of it. One thing I’m fascinated by is children in cults because they don’t start from the same place. I mean, children and religion in general. If you’re raised in it, when do you start to question it? When do you get out? And you lose your family, you lose everything you know if you get out. It’s a really tough thing. I mean, you’ve seen the ending. I don’t want to ruin it for people that haven’t. It’s not necessarily meant to be a happy ending. She’s been raised and grown one way. She might be part of the cycle. She won’t be as bad. Unfortunately, that’s how I feel about it. It’s really hard to break out the circles of what we’re raised.
HGL: I know in viewing it, I felt very empowered by that ending. But then there was that kind of moment of…are they going to know anything else?
Catherine: It’s interesting. Neil Gaiman has a great quote about it. As the creator, you have an opinion on where stuff lands, and then you put work out into the world and people interpret it a certain way. That’s a valid interpretation of those events. Like, I don’t know if you’ve seen Midsommar, but I love that film. I also loved how weird the ending made me feel. Like the ending made me feel really like, ‘am I happy?’
HGL: I think it plays in The Other Lamb, too. There’s this feeling kind of like catharsis. I remember feeling kind of elevated, almost high, after watching Midsommar, but I didn’t feel good about it.
Catherine: I think one of the things that horror does really well is it addresses social issues. It gives you that feeling of release. There’s the occasional horror film you watch and no one dies. It’s almost never a good horror film. You need to see some of those things on screen, because part of it is letting those feelings out. Though that’s complicated. You’re watching something, hoping people die, and that’s a weird thing.
HGL: That’s something that I wanted to touch on, especially because we’ve been talking about cults. Some horror films really thrive because of the sociopolitical culture and climate.
Catherine: They talk about what you’re afraid, and what the ‘70s were afraid of is very different to what we are afraid of now.
HGL: Yeah, I’ve noticed the recent trend of cult films. There have been quite a few. I think a lot of the ones that are considered elevated obviously fall into that. I think it speaks to the division that so many people are feeling ideologically and culturally, and I think that division is obviously showing through this cult catharsis.
Catherine: Yeah, I mean, I’d always been interested in cults, but then as I’ve been developing, it has taken on different overtones and different focuses. I don’t think you can pull that out when you’re writing. And then, we were making it, and we were making it in this environment. So, those things are always filtering.
What you were saying about what horror addresses is like, you know, if you look at something like Wicker Man, which is folk horror, one of my favorite films. It’s kind of talking about the scariness of cultural change and how threatened the status quo is by things that are different. It’s kind of like you’re on the side of the cult.
HGL: It’s the invasion of ‘the other’, but the other is actually our protagonist.
Catherine: 100%. Also, the scariness. Even though it’s older, it’s also kind of about sexual liberation at a time when that was less of a thing. And Midsommar, which is obviously kind of a modern interpretation in many ways, is a lot more about American colonialism. You’ve got that sense of like, we’re coming in and we’re looking at other people’s cultures, but then being affected by them, and grief and gaslighting. It’s got lots of other things it’s trying to say, and that would look very different if you’ve made it 20 years ago.
So I think horror, more so than a lot of other genres, really has to directly engage with your fears. I’m sorry, I rambled a bit…
HGL: No, this is the kind of stuff that I love! Getting back to The Other Lamb, though, another thing is that so many times films about cults happen in a static location, the entirety of a certain area is consumed by the ideology, and you took yours on the road. That has a divergent quality. What made you decide that they needed to go on that journey?
Catherine: I think it’s because I wanted the external journey to marry that internal journey. Especially when you’re in raised in something, because it’s meant to be quite isolated. Obviously it’s not going to be somewhere where people can drop by. It’s really hard to get a good cult happening without like being able to isolate your group. Someone can drop by and be like, ‘Hey, this is weird. What are you doing?’
HGL: I loved, loved that moment when Selah sees the police car, because it was the very first inclination that this isn’t so isolated. It was a trespass onto their society, and this isn’t happening in a vacuum.
Catherine: That was always in the script. You’d hit a very certain point which you could have been watching it going, ‘is this going on a hundred years ago.’ And little hints, like the caravan, tells you it’s not necessarily a hundred years ago. It was very unclear. And then when you see the police, hopefully it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s when we are.’ Like, it’s not what I thought. And it’s not some weird thing from 80 years ago. It’s now.
So, the journey. I wanted it to mirror the internal transformation and change Selah was going through. She has literally never left that area. For them to be shown the rest of the world, and then slowly realize there’s more to be seen. The story kind of requires that. That forward momentum. In cult film so often, it’s an adult coming into a place and finding something new within that realm, where for this, it was about someone that had been raised there all the time. So, the journey had to be outward.
HGL: There’s a sequence with a car, and it’s very…she’s in the car, but she’s not in the car…but it’s an acknowledgment of the outside world and it’s very interesting.
Catherine: Yeah, it’s kind of a pivotal moment. And, I think, a great example of what collaboration can bring. I’d always wanted a moment where she saw something modern. So, I’d had a moment in the script since a very, very early draft. Possibly the first draft. She’s walking in the group and she sees a car pass with a young girl her age. And then Malgo made that moment with her. And it works so well, and thematically fit.
It did exactly what I wanted that moment to do, which was, ‘that could have been my life.’ But then elevated it that little bit more by being kind of beautiful, surreal, different version of what she could have been. That’s how I interpret it.
In an ideal world, the scene’s always doing two or three things for you. Like, it’s doing something for plot, it’s doing something for character. That moment when, ‘this thing I’ve been raised in isn’t everything.’ You’ll have that moment, you’re raised by your parents in a certain value system, and then you start to see and encounter people that have a different one, but it’s not bad or wrong. It’s just different.
HGL: And being able to adapt, or even being given the opportunity to adapt. Going back to the ending, it is kind of up in the air. So, what’s next for you, that you’re allowed to talk about? [Laughs]
Catherine: A few things. I’m obviously trapped at home at the moment. I’ve been working on a few TV things and a few feature things. I’m not particularly loyal to either medium. I guess the main thing for me and my main passion is always genre. I want to write about horror and sci-fi. I definitely want to play around, but I’m not about to write a searing family drama. Unless it’s also got some sort of genre element.
HGL: Well, it seems like searing family drama, or drama in general, makes really great horror films. So, maybe you’ll get to do some of that.
Catherine: Right. I have an idea, but whenever I’m talking about it to people, I’m like, ‘well, here’s the genre hook, but really, it’s about siblings reconnecting.’ I think that’s always the case with good features and good TV. They’re never just a concept. They’re always trying to say something about the characters, and that’s good story.
The Other Lamb is available for streaming on Amazon Prime.
This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Related Article: Cult-ure: The Recruitment of ‘Cult Horror’ in Today’s America
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