Lamb (Icelandic: Dýrið, "The animal") is a 2021 supernatural horror film from Iceland directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson and starring Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, and Björn Hlynur Haraldsson.
It features María and Ingvar, a childless couple who own a small sheep farm in a remote patch of wilderness among the Icelandic mountains. They spend their days quietly tending to their flock and growing potatoes.
Then, one day, one of their pregnant ewes gives birth to something inexplicable... something that in the space of a single look, the couple makes the decision to whisk inside and raise as their own child.
As the pair settle into a blissful new life with their strange new daughter, whom they name Ada, they're ultimately forced to contend with the arrival of Ingvar's brother, Pétur, the ghosts of their own pasts, and the constantly looming presence of the wild world Ada came from, which seeks to have her back.
Not to be confused with the 2015 American film Lamb starring Oona Laurence. Or the 1992 Exploitation Film Dr. Lamb.
Lamb contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: Due to Ingvar's negligence, Ada's biological mother does get her hands on Ada at one point in the movie and takes her far enough away that María and Ingvar initially have trouble locating them. However, the viewer doesn't ever learn how the ewe got into the house in the first place, how she was able to carry a baby Ada away so far, or even where she was taking her.
- An Aesop:
- Some things in nature, and in life, cannot be claimed.
- One act of cruelty begets another.
- Denial can be dangerous if left unchecked.
- Blackmail: Pétur threatens to tell Ada what Maria did to Ada's biological mother unless she submit to his advances.
- Boom, Headshot!: María's ultimate method of dealing with Ada's biological mother. It nearly becomes Pétur's method of dealing with Ada.
- Chekhov's Gun: The couple has a rifle in their barn, which becomes plot relevant twice.
- Cute Mute: Ada never speaks, and her noise-making is mostly limited to faint, breathy vocalizations and whimpers. She's also an adorable sheep-humanoid hybrid child who loves her adoptive parents and innocently toddles after them in farm boots. Many viewers have admitted to falling in love with her for how cute she is.
- Death of a Child: Ingvar and María had a daughter of their own, Ada, but she was stillborn. Their grief over their lost child is what drove them to snatch another child away from her true mother and name her Ada.
- Dead Guy Junior: Ada was also the name of the couple's late child.
- A Dog Named "Dog": The family Border Collie is simply named Dog. This gives more impact to the fact that they give a real name to the lamb.
- Downer Ending: Ingvar is shot in the neck by Ada's biological father — a hulking half-ram, half humanoid creature — right in front of her eyes, and can only bleed out as he watches her fearfully escorted into the wilderness. María arrives on the scene just in time to watch him die, and the movie ends on her tearful horror as she wanders the hills alone.
- Dude, Not Funny!: At one point, Pétur offers Ada a handful of grass — which she eats — and calls her "sheepie, sheepie." Ingvar angrily snatches her away.
- Foreshadowing: During the first act, we know very little about the couple. When Ignvar reads in a magazine that scientists believe time travel is possible, Maria wistfully asks if that means people can go back in time. This is the first time we get an indication that there's a tragic event in their past. Specifically, the loss of their firstborn daughter Ada to stillbirth.
- Gilligan Cut: Petur refuses a glass of wine, then relents and asks for a small amount. The film then cuts to Petur swigging a giant beer as the trio watch handball.
- Gory Discretion Shot: What happens to the dog when it confronts Ada's father, though we get a gross close-up of its remains later.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Ada is a half humanoid, half sheep with a lamb's head and a child's body from the neck down and a cloven hoof for a right hand. She never speaks and will nibble on grass if offered some, but is sentient and as aware of what's going on around her as any toddler is. Her father is also a half-human ram hybrid.
- Happily Adopted: In the sense that Ada loves her parents dearly, and they love her. Her sheep mother isn't at all happy with this arrangement. Neither is her biological father.
- Heel–Face Turn: Downplayed. Pétur remains a pretty foul person at his core, but he does go from viewing Ada as a monster that he kidnaps and nearly murders to his niece that he adores.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: We know that Petur is a rebellious sort because he's wearing a leather jacket and black clothing. That and he's introduced being pulled out of a trunk and tossed onto the road by unknown associates.
- Kick the Dog: Maria kills Ada's biological mother, which establishes that, whatever loss they might have experienced, taking Ada as their daughter is wrong. In retribution, Ada's biological father murders María's husband and takes Ada away, leaving an emotionally devastated María to wander the hills alone.
- Laser-Guided Karma: María and Ingvar take Ada away from her sheep mother and adopt her as their own daughter to replace their stillborn child. When Ada's mother keeps trying to reclaim her daughter, María murders her. Karma eventually catches up to the human couple when Ada's biological father shows up to avenge his mate, killing Ingvar before taking Ada away - a repeat of the same grief and loss María and Ingvar subjected Ada's mother to.
- Meaningful Name: Ada means, among other things, "first daughter." It turns out she's not María and Ingvar's first daughter, or even their first Ada.
- Minimalist Cast: There are only three named human characters in the film.
- Missing Child:
- Ada disappears from where she's supposed to be sleeping, triggering a frantic search in which Ingvar checks the waterway, only for her to be discovered naked far out in the hills with her sheep birth mother.
- Ada disappears again. While it turns out she's sleeping soundly in a chair with Pétur, it's because he snuck her out of her crib, led her away from the house, and nearly shot her in the head.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers make this movie seem as though it's going to lean heavily on the horror, with the forces that bore Ada bearing down on the farm. In actuality, it's a slow family drama sprinkled with the supernatural.
- Put on a Bus: Pétur, literally.
- Replacement Goldfish: Deconstructed. By unspoken agreement, the couple immediately start treating the lamb as a replacement for their late daughter. They raise her in their daughter's old crib, apparently dress her in all of her old clothes, and give her the same name. The wife even kills the lamb's biological mother so she wouldn't threaten their perfect family. This later bites the couple in the ass when the lamb's biological father shows up and forces them to experience the same loss the lamb's mother went through.
- The Reveal: It takes a while for the camera to show exactly why the couple is treating a baby sheep like their daughter: She's half human.
- Serious Business: After almost two hours of very quiet, sober interaction, it's jarring to watch the three characters drunkenly watch a handball match and freak out about it.
- Silence Is Golden: Before Petur arrives, there is hardly any dialogue, and even afterwards, there are long stretches of silence.
- Sweet Sheep: Ada is a human/lamb hybrid who seems as sweet as any innocent child.
- Tomato in the Mirror: It's a brief one, but at one point, Ada looks at a photo of a flock of sheep and seems to have a moment of crisis over it.
- Tragic Stillbirth: The couple lost their first child and at multiple points, believe they might have lost their second.
- The Voiceless: Aside from the occasional bleating and whimpers, Ada is entirely unable to communicate vocally, not that Ingvar or Maria seem to care what she's trying to say.
- Would Hurt a Child: Subverted. Pétur tries to take Ada far away from the farm with the intention to shoot her dead, but gives up halfway through.
