''Lamb'' ( is, Dýrið, , The animal) is a 2021
folk horror
Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk religion, paganism, sacrifice and the dark aspects of natu ...
film directed by , who also co-wrote the screenplay with
Sjón
image:Sjon litteratureXchange-2019 DSC09264.jpg, 260px, Sjón at LiteratureXchange Festival ín Aarhus (Denmark 2019)
Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson (born 27 August 1962), known as Sjón ( ; ; meaning "sight" and being an abbreviation of his firs ...
. The film’s plot is about the birth of a human/sheep hybrid of mysterious origin and the couple who adopts the child as their own. An
international co-production
A co-production is a joint venture between two or more different production companies for the purpose of film production, television production, video game development, and so on. In the case of an international co-production, production companies ...
between
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
, and
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
, the film stars
Noomi Rapace
Noomi Rapace (; ; born 28 December 1979) is a Swedish actress.Karen Olsson, ''The New York Times Magazine'', 27 May 2012, p. 26. She achieved international fame with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptations of the ''Mil ...
, and marks Valdimar's
feature-length directorial debut. Rapace and
Béla Tarr
Béla Tarr (born 21 July 1955) is a Hungarian filmmaker. Debuting with the film '' Family Nest'' (1977), Tarr began his directorial career with a brief period of what he refers to as "social cinema", aimed at telling everyday stories about ordi ...
act as executive producers. After premiering at the
2021 Cannes Film Festival
The 74th annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 6 to 17 July 2021, after having been originally scheduled from 11 to 22 May 2021. American director Spike Lee was invited to be the head of the jury for the festival for a second time, after t ...
, the film was released in Iceland on 24 September 2021. It was selected as the Icelandic entry for the
Best International Feature Film at the
94th Academy Awards
The 94th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Los Angeles. The awards were scheduled after its u ...
.
Plot
In
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
, a herd of horses is spooked by an unknown, loudly-breathing entity that makes its way to a barn. Later, farmer María and her husband Ingvar are shocked when one of their pregnant sheep gives birth to a human/sheep
hybrid
Hybrid may refer to:
Science
* Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding
** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species
** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
with a mostly human body and a lamb's head and right arm.
María and Ingvar take the hybrid infant in as their own and grow to love her as their own child, naming her Ada after Maria's deceased daughter. Ada's biological mother becomes a nuisance, attempting to contact Ada constantly and loitering outside the couple's home. Shortly after an incident where Ada goes missing and is later found next to the mother, María shoots Ada's mother and buries her body in a shallow, unmarked grave. Unbeknownst to her, Ingvar's brother Pétur, who arrives at the farmhouse shortly before the killing, witnesses the incident before sleeping in the barn.
Pétur, who makes sexual advances towards María, is very disturbed by Ada and maintains the belief that "it's an animal, not a child". Ingvar claims the whole situation has given them happiness. Increasingly angered and disturbed by María and Ingvar's attachment to Ada, Pétur takes her on an early morning walk while everyone is asleep with the intention of shooting her. After having a tearful change of heart, however, he is later seen soundly sleeping with Ada and soon becomes an uncle to her.
One evening, while María, Pétur, and Ingvar are having a drunken party, Ada witnesses the unknown entity from before near the barn. The entity then proceeds to kill the family's dog before taking the family's gun. After the party, a drunk Ingvar goes to bed. Pétur makes sexual advances towards María once again. When she rejects his advances, Pétur reveals that he witnessed María killing Ada's sheep mother, trying to blackmail María into having sex with him by threatening to reveal this to Ada.
María pretends to be seduced by Pétur in order to lock him in a closet. María drives him to the bus stop the next morning and sends him away, insisting she is committed to a new start with her family. After waking up to find María and Pétur missing, Ingvar takes Ada to fix the broken tractor. On their way back home, the entity, revealed to be a ram/man hybrid and Ada's biological father, emerges and shoots Ingvar in the neck, before taking a tearful Ada with him and walking away into the wilderness.
María returns home and finds that Ingvar and Ada are missing. She searches for the two and discovers Ingvar before he dies, and despairs at the loss of her husband and new child. María searches the wilderness in vain, before closing her tear-filled eyes.
Cast
*
Noomi Rapace
Noomi Rapace (; ; born 28 December 1979) is a Swedish actress.Karen Olsson, ''The New York Times Magazine'', 27 May 2012, p. 26. She achieved international fame with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptations of the ''Mil ...
as María
*
Hilmir Snær Guðnason
Hilmir Snær Guðnason (born 24 January 1969, in Reykjavík) is an Icelandic actor and voice actor. He is famous in his native country and has appeared in both film and on stage. In 2000 he was named as one of European films 'Shooting Stars' by ...
as Ingvar
*
Björn Hlynur Haraldsson
Björn Hlynur Haraldsson (born 8 December 1974) is an Icelandic actor and director. Björn was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, and graduated from the Icelandic Arts Academy in 2001. He co-founded the theatre company Vesturport the same year. In spri ...
as Pétur
*
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson (; born 22 November 1963) is an Icelandic actor who has worked extensively in Icelandic cinema. He has had roles in Friðrik Þór Friðriksson's '' Englar alheimsins'' (''Angels of the Universe'') and Baltasar Kormák ...
as Man on Television
Production
In February 2019,
Noomi Rapace
Noomi Rapace (; ; born 28 December 1979) is a Swedish actress.Karen Olsson, ''The New York Times Magazine'', 27 May 2012, p. 26. She achieved international fame with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptations of the ''Mil ...
and
Hilmir Snær Guðnason
Hilmir Snær Guðnason (born 24 January 1969, in Reykjavík) is an Icelandic actor and voice actor. He is famous in his native country and has appeared in both film and on stage. In 2000 he was named as one of European films 'Shooting Stars' by ...
had joined the cast of the film, with Valdimar Jóhannsson directing from a screenplay he wrote alongside
Sjón
image:Sjon litteratureXchange-2019 DSC09264.jpg, 260px, Sjón at LiteratureXchange Festival ín Aarhus (Denmark 2019)
Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson (born 27 August 1962), known as Sjón ( ; ; meaning "sight" and being an abbreviation of his firs ...
.
Release
In June 2020, the film was sold across
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
in the
New Europe Film Sales agency. The film was picked up by distributors in Czech Republic (Artcam), France (The Jokers), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Slovakia (ASFK), Germany (Koch Films), Poland (Gutek Film), Benelux (The Searchers), Hungary (Vertigo), Austria (Filmladen), Denmark (Camera Film), Lithuania (Scanorama), former Yugoslavia (Five Stars/Demiurg), Estonia (Must Käsi) and Latvia (Kino Bize) with
MUBI
Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...
acquiring the distribution rights for Latin America (excluding Mexico), Turkey, India, the UK and Ireland.
In July 2021,
A24
A24 is an American independent entertainment company that specializes in film and television production, as well as film distribution. It is based in New York City.
A24 was founded in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges. Pr ...
acquired North American distribution rights to the film.
The film had its world premiere on 13 July 2021 as part of the official selection at the
2021 Cannes Film Festival
The 74th annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 6 to 17 July 2021, after having been originally scheduled from 11 to 22 May 2021. American director Spike Lee was invited to be the head of the jury for the festival for a second time, after t ...
in the ''
Un Certain Regard
(, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob.
The section presents 20 films w ...
'' section. It was released in the United States on 8 October 2021. The film also had a special screening of
BFI London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shor ...
on 15 October 2021
Although the film was not released in Hong Kong, the Mandarin title used in the Taiwanese market ( zh, t=羊懼, j=joeng4 geoi6, l=Fear/Terror of Sheep) drew attention from Hong Kong media on the Internet for being homonymous with "member", a euphemism for penis (), with social media users joking about the awkwardness of mentioning the title and coming up with other phallic puns. A meme emerged where various pictures were edited to resemble the film's poster and given similar titles that were also puns, often on various explicit and obscene words; additionally, a government environmental mascot, , used the meme on a Facebook post calling for less wasteful use of notebooks. Writing for ''
The News Lens
''The News Lens'' (TNL) is an independent digital media based in Taiwan, founded by Joey Chung and Mario Yang in 2013, with multilingual versions in Chinese, English and Japanese. It provides the digital natives with inclusive, in-depth, diverse ...
'', Bruce Lai identified aspects of the film that fit with this interpretation of the title, connecting the entity (Ada's father) with beings in Greek mythology such as
satyr
In Greek mythology, a satyr ( grc-gre, :wikt:σάτυρος, σάτυρος, sátyros, ), also known as a silenus or ''silenos'' ( grc-gre, :wikt:Σειληνός, σειληνός ), is a male List of nature deities, nature spirit with ears ...
s and
faun
The faun (, grc, φαῦνος, ''phaunos'', ) is a half-human and half-goat mythological creature appearing in Greek and Roman mythology.
Originally fauns of Roman mythology were spirits (genii) of rustic places, lesser versions of their c ...
s, particularly the god
Pan, that exhibit a similar half-human, half-animal appearance as well as hyper-masculine characteristics, and perceived María's relationship with Ada as trying to fill the absence of her human daughter, drawing parallels to
penis envy
Penis envy (german: Penisneid) is a stage theorized by Sigmund Freud regarding female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a defining m ...
.
Reception
Box office
In the United States and Canada, ''Lamb'' was released alongside ''
No Time to Die
''No Time to Die'' is a 2021 spy film and the twenty-fifth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, starring Daniel Craig in his fifth and final portrayal of fictional British MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Cary Jo ...
'' and was debuted to $1 million from 583 theaters, finishing seventh and marking the best-ever opening weekend for an Icelandic film in the U.S.
Critical response
David Fear of ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' described the film as "the odd, unsettling, soon-to-be-your-cult-movie-of-choice straight outta Iceland", and wrote: "It’s the sweetest, most touching waking nightmare you’ve ever experienced." Jeannette Catsoulis of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' called the film an "atmospheric debut feature", and added that it "plays like a folk tale and thrums like a horror movie." She wrote: "Slow-moving and inarguably nutty, ''Lamb'' nevertheless wields its
atavistic
In biology, an atavism is a modification of a biological structure whereby an ancestral genetic trait reappears after having been lost through evolutionary change in previous generations. Atavisms can occur in several ways; one of which is when ...
power with the straightest of faces". Michael O'Sullivan of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' also described the film as a "haunting, atmospheric feature debut", and wrote: "Johannsson has a way of imbuing everything — animate and inanimate, even an empty doorway — with a kind of living, breathing spirit." He gave the film a score of 3/4 stars. Katie Walsh of the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote: "Ominous mountains look down upon the pastoral arena where this fantastical yet meditative rural drama plays out; it’s a modern folk tale about the strange realities of life and death that such a closeness to nature affords."
Joe Morgenstern
Joe Morgenstern (born October 3, 1932) is an American writer and retired film critic. He wrote for ''Newsweek'' from 1965 to 1983, and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' from 1995 to 2022. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005. Morgen ...
of ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' described the film as "a shaggy lamb story expertly told."
Kevin Maher
Kevin Andrew Maher (born 17 October 1976) is a former professional footballer and coach who played as a midfielder. He is head coach of National League side Southend United. Born in England, he represented the Republic of Ireland internationall ...
of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "The director, Valdimar Johannsson, treats the admittedly ridiculous material with a convincing, deadpan seriousness and is supported at every step by his star performer on impeccable form."
Richard Brody
Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999.
Education
Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He first ...
of ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' was more critical of the film, saying that it "preens and strains to be admired even as it reduces its characters to pieces on a game board and its actors to puppets." Barry Hertz of ''
The Globe and Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...
'' criticized the film's ending as being "like a parody of an A24 horror movie", and wrote: "I won’t make the obvious joke and say it’s baaad. But its sheep thrills are mutton to write home about, either." Alison Willmore of ''
Vulture
A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including Condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to North and ...
'' wrote: "By the time the final act rolls around, ''Lamb'' approaches the idea that there’s a price that must be paid with a shrugging diffidence rather than impending doom. It’s such an underwhelming conclusion to a film with such a compelling start."
Some critics have compared the film to a reversal of the Ancient Greek Minotaur myth, further linking the mythology of "Lamb" to Hellenic origins.
See also
*
*
References
External links
* {{IMDb title, 9812474
2021 films
2021 drama films
2020s monster movies
2021 fantasy films
2020s Icelandic-language films
Swedish drama films
Swedish fantasy films
Icelandic drama films
Icelandic fantasy films
Polish drama films
Polish fantasy films
A24 (company) films
Folk horror films
Films about families
Films about sheep
Films set in farms
Films set in Iceland
2021 directorial debut films
2020s American films