Quiet horror is usually a foreign concept. American horror tends to arrive in big meaty chunks, like shark chum. It has all the humility of a Halloween mask and all the subtlety of a dude making an outfit out of human skin. It Follows and possesses and conjures and kills. It wants recognition; it wants vengeance; it wants blood. And then it ceases, waits and year or two, and wants more.
Today is about quiet horror. Today is about a sheep farm in rural Iceland. (“But Jim, isn’t ALL of Iceland rural?” No, but that’s not actually a bad guess.) The body count is minimal. The tragedy is minimal. But it’s still horror. It just isn’t the kind we’re used to.
Like I suggested above, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are sheep farmers. They are young-ish, yet have no children. Are we supposed to understand from their quiet sheep tending that they were supposed to have children and failed to plant the kiddie crop? Hard to say. There’s almost no dialogue
for the first twenty minutes. The two assist in a handful of lambings until one ewe gives birth to an ovine minotaur. Yes, a minotaur. The baby has the head and right arm of a Lamb and the rest is human baby.
Well, gosh, that doesn’t happen every day, huh?
I’m not sure what protocol is when you birth a minotaur. But if it’s me, I might consult the book of revelations … or at least look at my husband a little funny. Just sayin’. Maria and Ingvar decide to treat the kid (pun intended) as a human baby. The couple doesn’t really have neighbors or needs outside their immediate acreage, so Ada the Lamb-human hybrid can be raised away from prying eyes, both happily and indefinitely.
Sure, the ewe who birthed her is pissed off, but what ewe gonna do, huh?
It occurred
to me more than once that the child’s diet will be odd. I mean you just know the couple raise sheep so they can have meat in the winter, but, ummm, what do you feed your Lamb-toddler? Lamb stew seems wrong, huh? But all the domestic problems are relatively minimal until Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, the Icelandic David Harbour) shows to screw things up.
Lamb is a little too quiet for my tastes. I enjoy subtle horror, but this film feels a smidge empty. It’s like somebody had a fantastic idea for a movie, but had no clue what to do with it. For instance, the couple never once has to answer a question along the lines of: “How are you going to introduce that thing to society?” Nor did the film ever intend to. Lamb has a great premise, but not an entirely successful follow-through. Is it enough? Well, I suppose I enjoyed the uniqueness of film presented. That’ll do, Lamb. That’ll do.
A lamb-human hybrid, what the *bleep*?
Might give you nightmares while you sleep
Among practical goals:
A counter when trolls
Accuse her of being a “sheep”
Rated R, 106 Minutes
Director: Valdimar Jóhannsson
Writer: Sjón (I don’t care what Björk says: that’s not a name; that’s a perfume), Valdimar Jóhannsson
Genre: The perils of farming
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Minotaurs
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Farmers
