LAMB

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B-
Special Effects: C+

Nobody in Lamb, the Icelandic horror-drama out this weekend, seems to react appropriate to whatever the hell is going on. There’s a moment when “Uncle Pétur,” the third of only three people in this movie with speaking parts, asks his brother and his sister-in-law, “What the fuck is this?” It’s the one moment in the movie when any of the characters comes even halfway close to reacting sensibly to what is before their eyes, and the question might have better served as the film’s title.

Setting aside the glacial pacing, relatively early on in the narrative, married couple Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) have already assisted in the delivery of two lambs from a pregnant sheep, and are now on the third. We don’t see what they see plop onto the floor of the barn, only the bizarrely subtle shock on Maria and Ingvar’s faces. One would think the first question Maria would have is, “Have you been fucking our sheep?” Instead, they come to an unspoken but immediate agreement to raise this lamb child as their own child, clearly as a replacement for a child they lost. They even give it the same name, Ada.

In any realistic scenario, all of this would be met with shock and horror. Instead, after Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) shows up and waits about a day to ask that million-dollar question, “What the fuck is this?” the answer he gets is: “Happiness.” Well all right then, thanks for clearing that up!

For part of Lamb, I wondered if the lamb child was meant to be symbolic rather than literal. Maybe Maria and Ingvar have simply taken in a regular, literal lamb and just decided to treat it like a new baby, and we’re seeing some version of what they’ve created in their minds—kind of like Lars and the Real Girl but with a sheep instead of a blow-up doll. The couple of scenes in which Pétur angrily tells them “It’s not a child, it’s an animal!” seems to support this theory. It had to be either that, or Ingvar was indeed fucking the sheep, and Maria simply couldn’t be bothered to care. Maybe they’re just the most open minded couple on the planet? Hashtag couples goals!

Side note, the special effects in this movie are decidedly low budget. The lamb’s head is only ever fully a regular lamb’s head, never even animated (Babe, this is not), superimposed crudely onto the body of a human child. In only one shot to we get a good look at the entire body, and we see that the lamb child has one two human legs, one human arm and hand, and one lamb leg and hoof for the other arm. There are moments that are just too goofy for words, such as when Maria dances to pop music with Ada in the living room, or when Ada sits at the kitchen table with the house cat on her lap. On the upside, a whole lot of the scenes are shot outside, with beautiful cinematography of stunning vistas, by far the best part of the movie.

It would be a fascinating experience to have gone into this movie having no clue whatsoever was coming, to just sit and see this movie completely blind to its content. If I had not seen the trailer first, the shocks would have been a lot more effective. I don’t know that it would have made the overall experience any better, mind you, so I don’t feel particularly bad about what I have revealed here. Besides, this is all incidental to the turn the story takes at the end anyway. It turns out, all the questions about how the hell this lamb child exists at all do get answers in the end, and they don’t come anywhere close to what you might expect. And, as a matter of fact, the one scene to which I refer here is where the makeup and special effects are actually relatively impressive.

Bottom line: Lamb is a movie you are meant to expect to be weird . . . and you still leave thinking, Jesus, that was fucking weird. There are some critical reactions to this movie that ascribe it a level of emotional depth that I just did not see. This movie just wants to be strange for its own sake, and in that endeavor it’s a smashing success. I’m still over here wondering why both Maria and Ingvar are so chill about the discovery that Iceland is apparently The Island of Doctor Moreau.

When she said she wanted a kid, maybe she should have been more specific.

Overall: B-