Lamb

I laughed out loud... and had nightmares later.

The director, Valdimar Johannsson, treats the admittedly ridiculous material with a convincing, deadpan seriousness and is supported at every step by his star performer on impeccable form.

Much about director Valdimar Jóhannsson's film has the timeless feel of the ancient folk tale you feel it must be, but isn't.

Centred by a committed, affecting performance by Noomi Rapace, Lamb gets over its longueurs and missteps with interesting ideas, filmmaking craft and a unique tone of voice.

Refreshing work from Rapace even if the film itself isn't perfect.

It's a great performance from Rapace.

Johannsson studied film with Bela Tarr, and it is easy to sense the influence of the minimalist master even if it looks nothing like one of his own films. The metaphorical power is in the thing itself; it doesn’t need to mean something else.

Lamb goes for it in all of its challenging manners and pushes the boundaries for A24 in all of its weirdness

Lamb evokes ruminations on the fraught complexities of human-animal relations, whether it’s what we choose to eat, the arbitrary value we assign to the lives of different species, or our tendency to anthropomorphize.

It’s rare when an ending saves an entire movie. But that happens to be the case with Jóhannsson’s feature debut.