Lamb review: Dread and portent in fable-like horror movie

There are no jump scares and very little gore, but this unusual horror movie will make you deeply unsettled and discombobulated.

Lamb is far from a conventional horror movie.

Rather than jump-scares or excessive gore, Lamb relies on a heavy air of dread. The Icelandic film is slowly, deeply unsettling, even when its characters are doing something as mundane as eating or as joyful as dancing.

You can feel it, the portent that hangs over the whole piece, that it’s heading for something horrific and any moment could be potential peril. There can be no other conclusion when you’ve challenged the natural order.

Starring Noomi Rapace and Hilmur Snaer Gudnasson, Lamb is set on an isolated farm, nestled within a valley surrounded by towering Icelandic mountain ranges. It’s so beautiful it’s otherworldly, especially when the fog rolls in.

Director Valdimar Johannsson and cinematographer Eli Arenson capture the exteriors in expansive wide-shots, emphasising the overwhelming, untameable nature outside, no matter how much humans try to bend it to their will.

Noomi Rapace in Iceland film Lamb. Picture: Madman

Maria (Rapace) and Ingvar (Gudnasson) are two farmers who, when birthing new lamb, discover a creature they decide to raise as a child.

For the first act of the film, the full view of the creature isn’t revealed, we only see its head, coddled in a blanket in the bath, the cot or in their arms.

But it’s clearly not just another lamb, and Maria and Ingvar don’t know what the audience knows from the film’s first scene – that something spooked the sheep barn not long before the birth.

Lamb is part folkloric horror and part domestic drama, a portrait of a couple who are unable to cope with grief, channelling their energy into something that is inconceivable. The horror is as much in the emotional turmoil as it is in anything that is explicitly on screen. There’s an ever-present but unsaid sense of loss.

Even as Lamb presents idyllic scenes such as making flower crowns in a field, the fact that there is an element that shouldn’t be infuses every moment with a haunting tension that can’t be shaken off.

And Maria has disturbing dreams that isn’t immediately apparent if what you’re seeing is real or subconscious.

Lamb is in cinemas now. Picture: Madman

Lamb has sparse dialogue and the quiet of the surrounds means every extra sound is loaded with significance, such as the their border collie’s small whines.

Johannsson deftly commands every element in crafting a simple story. He doesn’t need to be showy or heavy-handed in evoking the primal horror at the heart of the very weird and very provocative Lamb.

A shot that lingers on the cat’s penetrating glare for three seconds longer than is comfortable, the subtle metallic-ness of the score and the stillness of the camera as the characters move within their space all contribute to Lamb’s discombobulating effect.

It may feel almost formalist, it may ask a lot, constantly challenging the audience into grappling with its fable-like story, but it’s certainly not going to be like any other movie you see this year.

Rating: 3.5/5

Lamb is in cinemas now

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