'Lamb' is weird, and that's about it
A24
Nobody wants to be the, “Your half-lamb/half-human story doesn’t feel real” guy, but I’m going to be. And not because there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the premise, as director/co-writer Valdimar Johansson aims to filter grief and some resulting destabilized choices through ancient folk tales and even horror. He just does it baaaadly. (Sorry.)
It’s better not to tell you too much about how the slow-moving narrative unfolds beyond Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) living alone in a beautiful Icelandic countryside. OK, not alone; there are many, many, many sheep (and a dog), and the birth of a particular lamb has a surprising and unusual impact on the dynamic of their household. The problem is that “Lamb” needs to go in the direction of something like “Splice,” considering far more details about the titular character’s life and capabilities and feelings. As is, the script doesn’t even feel finished, dropping in a few stray threads of ideas and coughing them up as if stories are just hairballs that haven’t been thought all the way through.
That takes nothing away from the beautiful scenery or the strong performances or the always-heartbreaking concept of human emotion pushed beyond reason and into something more desperate. But there needs to be a stronger sense here of what’s happening and how everyone feels about it and just more than glorious greenery. That you’ll still very much want to travel to Iceland is either a comment on the cinematography or the fact that “Lamb” isn’t nearly as disturbing or clever as it thinks.
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