LAMB Movie Review: A dark and puzzling movie

Horror can come in many forms, from very grotesque and explicitly visual ways to the most normal and innocent things, it is difficult to see works with good execution of ideas, even more so with a good plot.

Independent productions with modest budgets seem to enjoy more freedom than that given by the big studios, the formula that they must be a blockbuster that has guaranteed success to be profitable for them, but that is not always the case, we have seen lousy productions millionaires and the opposite case of great works with little support and diffusion.

The cinema gives us great surprises, some good and others extremely unpleasant, I thought that after seeing A Serbian Film (2010) by director Srđan Spasojević there was nothing more surprising and disturbing due to its plot and crudeness in presenting violent and sexually explicit images with an ending that as a viewer, LAMB is Valdimar Jóhannsson’s directorial debut and he has done very well.

What is the film about?

María (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are Icelandic couples who live raising and caring for their flock of sheep on a remote farm. One day they discover that one of their animals has given birth to a creature that they cannot understand. origin, they decide to keep her and raise her as their own, this unexpected and incredible event will question their beliefs and the perspective of a new family that will take them to a point of near madness.

What we see here is something extremely simple, the idea of ​​a phenomenon half human and half sheep may not surprise us because what can be horror in all this? the answer is the direction it has and how the events are being narrated.

The film reflects on fatherhood, family, and nature, its protagonists are unhappy, their farm is located somewhere in a remote mountainous area that seems to be frozen in time, the fact of being alone in the middle of nowhere After losing a daughter, anything that comes their way can be taken as valid, like a miracle, although things are not what they seem, the couple dedicates themselves to doing their day to day plowing their land, harvesting their food and taking care of their cattle. sheep and horses with dedication but without joy or something that motivates them, they exist just to exist.

The atmosphere that they have created is real, real locations, there are no sets or a CGI that pre-fabricates what we are seeing, it is a disturbingly calm, silent, cold, and sinister place, the perfect place for something horrible to happen, the movie They don’t take great pains to explain origins that this would be fine for a prequel, they simply make an approach, develop it and conclude it, there is also no discourse on the family and its values ​​or on what is established that coexistence should be familiar, no, there isn’t that here, they set their own rules and comply with those of the genre to which they belong without going around too much with subplots, what we see is what there is and it’s terrible.

This work results visually, its scoop is the one that represents a great challenge in its script that says a lot with little, the images are the ones that narrate the facts, the ones that envelop us until we immerse ourselves in the life of this decadent couple, not here there is the glamor of Hollywood to which we are accustomed, there are no surprises or scenes that have been studied to cause impact, here what is frightening is to see that this couple accepts a phenomenon creature as their own and they raise him as a son with the eldest of naturalness calling her Ada and living with her teaching her values ​​and educating her under his principles that are beyond what is established by society or even a religion.

The script written by the novelist Sjón and Jóhannsson himself poses things head-on and in the face of the viewer, there are no narrative tricks or clichés here, it is difficult to describe it and place it in a specific genre, it is a folkloric and horror psychodrama, which on this last one rethinks the idea that there has to be gore or violent and explicit scenes, its rhythm is too slow and it doesn’t get tired on the contrary, this element is what gives shape and personality to this work, it is where its horror lies and where we as viewers feel uncomfortable at every moment but we can’t stop watching, this is so well managed that from its first minutes it catches us and we want to know more until it reaches its climax and conclusion.

Ada is a sweet and friendly half sheep and half-human creature that has been credibly created, most if not all of the visual effects are put into her, you can see the craftsmanship in creating her with the puppet technique and a very subtle CGI, they feed her, bathe her and educate her as if everything was fine with this tender being, they see it as a gift that nature has given them in compensation for their great loss, which at times makes us doubt if what we see is it real or is it the product of the minds twisted by the pain of this couple, they make us doubt if what they see exists or is the result of their madness.

The design of the character of Ada-lamb, for example, and whose name takes on a disturbing meaning before its end simultaneously evokes the beauty and the grotesque and the comfort of this happy family becomes something cruel, the greatest success it has is to make us believe that this happiness is normal, the high-concept stories that we have seen in many other works are not based on recognizable human emotions, their characters simply remain impassive and create their own reality outside the world in which they live, they create emotions and feelings according to this element that has the role of being something that is there but that we do not see consciously, however, it affects us and makes us think that we can guess the rest of the plot, there is no involuntary sense of humor or irony in fact, The most disturbing thing lies in how little disturbing it is for us to have seen all this, it surrounds us to such an extent that by the end we also see it in a more normal way, what we can and be very disconcerting.

The facts here swing between reason and madness, between moral and emotional ambiguity, as viewers we cannot clearly define who is the monster here and who is the victim in this twisted family, the issue of isolation and loneliness already has been taken countless times to the big screen in almost all genres that, if well managed, results in good work, here that is not what matters, its director plays at will with open and closed spaces, we believe that suddenly and nothing will come out a monster to attack any of them, that what is behind everything is an evil and diabolical entity, that we will see a terrible and painful conclusion and we could not be more wrong, the cinema gives us certain guidelines so that without being critical and experts we can identify these elements in any fantasy and horror movie, when we are presented with something like LAMB then we hesitate and get hooked on a product that, apart from being well done, leaves us feeling uncomfortable and anxious feeling, the same one I have now as I write these lines.

A24 may have wisely marketed this project as another one of their weird horror movies this is more of a dark and offbeat fantasy tale it’s not necessarily a story with a happy and comforting ending it’s more of a movie about how pain can overcome all logical even if everyone says otherwise but it also defines in a bizarre and twisted way the love of any parent towards a child whether it is their own or not.

Its ending leaves us with a huge feeling of emptiness, with questions without a concrete answer of what it is that we have just seen, it leaves us wanting to explore more in its characters that have the just development that is needed to tell these events, we leave a plausible reflection on what is considered normal and abnormal in the world in which we currently live.

The cast has very few actors Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson who play people who seem ordinary but who have a deep background of which we only see a part and who manage to develop them very well and without much effort.

The music composed by Þórarinn Guðnason has the same structure as the plot, it is simple and slow without great orchestral sounds, it is there and reminds us that horror is also audiovisual.

In conclusion, LAMB is something that remains undefined in a genre, that goes from being any commercial product for a mass audience, it is a discreet film that from the beginning sets out where it is going and with its style, personality and substance arrives to be darkly disconcerting.

LAMB is now available on the MUBI platform.