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Lamb Movie Review

Lamb is a 2021 Icelandic drama film directed by Valdimar Johannsson in his directorial debut. It stars Noomi Rapace in the main role. It’ a very strange, crazy movie.

In rural Iceland, a childless couple discover a strange and unnatural newborn in their sheep barn. They decide to raise her as their own, but sinister forces are determined to return the creature to the wilderness that birthed her. What I liked about the movie is the straightforward approach to this narrative that is anything but ordinary. That made the film unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) funny and certainly fascinating to behold.

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So, apparently a husband fucked a sheep and a half-sheep, half human is born. They take care of her, but eventually a ram-human hybrid arrives, kills the husband and leaves with the creature. There are obviously some metaphors going on here, but personally the movie ended up being too opaque.

The ram hybrid may stand for the perverse nature of humans. And the film can be understood as an ecological parable and a fable, but still most of these explanations would reaching too hard to give meaning to an otherwise strange film that is mostly meant to shock viewers with its disturbing nature.

And that it also failed to do properly. While I strongly appreciated the direct influences from Robert Eggers’ ‘The Witch’ in particular, the film was only partially able to properly execute its horror elements, mostly focusing on the dramatic parts unfortunately. And that entire character of Petar was unnecessary for the story at hand.

The husband and the wife instantly setting off to care for this hybrid creature without questioning any of it was maybe a metaphor for the hopelessness of childless parents, but the movie again failed to properly execute this message. Of the acting performances, clearly Noomi Rapace stood out and delivered such a terrific, emotional turn. The actress once lived in Iceland, so that helped her regarding language.

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While Lamb is phenomenally shot and quite bleak in its imagery, it needed more atmosphere and chilling elements to properly counteract the silliness of the premise. That uneasiness in its tone never quite went away, though I still appreciated the originality of this entire story. The ending twist was terrific and quite cool for sure, but the slow first half does require patience from most viewers.

Lamb is this crazy Icelandic horror drama that deals with such a batshit insane premise that is best seen to be believed. The central performance from Noomi Rapace is terrific, some of its bleak imagery is quite powerful and the twist ending is memorable. The flick obviously deals with some ecological metaphors but is too opaque in execution as it fails to make a proper statement about any of them. The uneasiness of its tone that ranges from silly to straightforward to disturbing was both interesting and undeniably messy, which is standard fare for a debuting director.

My Rating – 3.5