Lamb: Film Review
I really appreciate Noomi Rapace‘s work, so of course, I wanted to check out her latest movie Lamb, which is a very odd yet compelling drama, mystery, horror, fantasy and creature feature mash-up.
Set in rural Iceland, the film tells the story of childless couple Maria (Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) who discover a shocking and mysterious newborn in their barn. They decide to raise it as their own, with devastating consequences.
The film starts off like a run-of-the-mill drama, with us following Maria and Ingvar as they work on their farm. It’s leisurely paced and very sparse with the dialogue – they barely speak and we spend a long time watching them go about their day before we hear any speech. I wasn’t bored but I was keen for it to get going and my wish was granted when they made their discovery. That’s when things really got interesting. We don’t see the newborn fully for a long time and the mystery of what makes it so special was riveting. There is also an ominous presence around the farm. We don’t see it but we can hear it and it scares the animals. The suspense around this figure builds nicely toward the epic reveal at the end.
I’ve seen this film described as a horror-comedy but that doesn’t feel right to me. It isn’t particularly funny (admittedly, it’s not particularly scary either) but you might laugh just out of the sheer oddness of it all. The newborn’s appearance is rather unnerving and I giggled a few times out of uneasiness more than anything else.
Although the dialogue is a bit too sparse for my taste and I would have liked to know a bit more about Maria, Ingvar and his brother Petur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), I thought the script was very smart in how and when it revealed information to us. The characters are economical with their speech, particularly at the start, but you can read between the lines and infer a lot about their history.
The concept is very bizarre and the actors could have easily gone for heightened performances to match the oddball idea. Thankfully, they went for realism and their performances are so natural and grounded that it feels like you are watching normal scenes of family life around the house – if you can ignore the elephant in the room, metaphorically speaking. Rapace, in particular, does an excellent job telling us everything we need to know about Maria non-verbally; she doesn’t need speech to convey her emotions.
Lamb is a slow-burning mash-up of genres that you need to see to believe. It’s out there and a little horrifying but also extremely riveting and intriguing. I thought about it for hours after!
In cinemas from Friday 10th December and on MUBI from 25th February