Folk Horror Season:Lamb (Dir Valdimar Jóhannsson, 1h47m, 2021)

Folklore and fairytale as entertainment are entwined as far back as the morality plays of the Medieval era, and the Commedia dell'arte of the 16th to 18th Century; the later collection of these by writers such as the Brothers Grimm and the earlier work of Charles Perrault evolved an oral tradition into a written one, and from this, comes forth multitudes, from much of Walt Disney's best work, to opera, to dark reimaginings by writers such as Angela Carter and film-makers like Jean Cocteau. Almost as numerous are those original works that take the folklore and fairytales of a nation as a basis; Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke and My Neighbour Totoro, Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales and Kim Jee-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters, among them.

Iceland is not a nation short on folklore; even without the dense mythology of the Viking era, there are the remarkably bloody Icelandic Sagas that rival any of HBO's major work for pure violence and bodycount, not to mention its decidedly unsettling Yule menagerie with violent troublemakers and giant blood-thirsty cats. Yet, Iceland's horror market is, surprisingly for a nation otherwise rife with filmmakers, remarkably thin, with only Belle (2023, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast), Rift (2017) and The Damned (2024) notable among recent genre films.

In terms of folk horror, tales are scanter still, with only The Juniper Tree (1990), featuring one Bjork Guðmundsdóttir, to note of. Lamb is thus not exactly entering a crowded flock of films. Depicting a folklore-cum-fairytale atmosphere, albeit a dark one that cannot help but be compared to the other films it shares a distributor with, in the form of A24, the films focuses on a remote part of Iceland in the modern day. Here, grieving parents María and Ingvar (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason), who run a farm, come across something strange and, at first unsettling, in their barn, which slowly begins to change their lives.

Much like Godland (2023), it is a film dominated by landscape, but unlike his countryman, Valdimar Jóhannsson makes the open spaces of Iceland unnerving, holding something unnatural and ultimately malevolent. From the very first shot of the film, a Jaws-esque POV of something that travels inland to Maria and Ingvar's farm, arriving in the sheep barn, so the film immediately has a tension to it; the film's cinematographer, Eli Arenson often having the camera linger, holding on doorways, windows, into which we expect this visitation to emerge. This is an expectation that hangs over the film for much of its runtime, only heightened by the sudden birth of the film's titular lamb, soon dubbed Ada.

Whilst the film keeps Ada's appearance veiled, as the couple try to work out what to do with this strange new child, keeping her swaddled in blankets, or hugged into a shoulder in such a way that their appearance is kept from the audience, in sequences eerily resembling Eraserhead, the reveal of what Ada is is no less impressive. Whilst she is brought to life by complex puppets, child-actor stand-in and even trick photography, Ada remains this strange, and curiously affecting creature, who the bereaved couple immediately begin to treat as a surrogate daughter. Thus the film gives way to sequences in which the trio go on family outings, or care for their strange child as they go about the farm work. Across this idyllic scene, however, cast two shadows

The first is that of the unseen figure of the creature, this unseen and questionably malign presence in the Icelandic landscape; its hinted presence, the recurring held shots on the Icelandic landscape waiting for something to emerge from them. The other is the loutish Petur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), whose presence in the second half of the film is, at turns, charming and disturbing, arriving during one of the film's most shocking scenes. His addition to the cast launches everything up a notch, acting as threat to both María and Ada, and yet, soon becomes protector of the family's strange child, despite his earlier reservations and open dismissal of their fostering of the child.

The problem is that around these central moments, these tensions between the unknown, the grieving family, the unsettling figure of Petur-whose designs on María are barely touched upon-and the strange hybrid child themselves, is precious little. The film's themes of loss and motherhood are well-defined in the first half of the film but then, with the appearance of Petur, and the film's exploration of this strange domesticity largely disappear from the film, to be replaced with what amounts to low-tension dramatics before the film's ending arrives with the same jolt as the finale of a mildly entertaining roller-coaster. There are moments, particularly the sparse dialogue of the first third of the film that point towards something even more impressive, and, shorn of its less focused scenes, this would have made a tight, if sparse ninety-minute film.

This is not to call Lamb disappointing; after all, Iceland's horror output of the last two decades comprises half a dozen films, and more are always welcome in this flock; this is, after all, Valdimar Jóhannsson's directorial debut, and leading with an idea this original, one cannot help but be hopeful for what he, and his nation's re-found fascination with horror cinema may bring. For now, Lamb is an intriguing, if slightly lopsided beast, a curious folktale from a nation brimming with them.

Rating: Recommend

Lamb is available via streaming on Mubi, and on DVD and BluRay from Mubi in the UK and via streaming on Apple TV, and on DVD from Mubi, in the USA

Next week, and indeed next month, we arrive at a landmark 400 reviews, and consider four visions of the future in 1980s Science Fiction, beginning with Ridley Scott's iconic Blade Runner