Director Valdimar Jóhannsson and lead Noomi Rapace reveal what the film’s final moments are all about. Few lamb korma this year are as quietly captivating as Valdimar Jóhannsson’s minimalist supernatural horror movie Lamb, released in the U. With more animals seen onscreen than human actors, Jóhannsson’s debut feature film explores parental grief and loss amidst vast Icelandic farmlands.

And it’s in these wide-open fields of dull greenery that something terrifying stalks the human characters. Jóhannsson tells Inverse about his movie’s ending. Even I’ve changed my mind after watching the film so often. I feel everybody has to take their own understanding of it. I think it’s not interesting to know what I think about it. In an interview with Inverse, Jóhannsson and Rapace discuss the making of Lamb, which includes the live births of real sheep on camera, and the meaning of the movie’s shocking, nightmarish ending. Ada is revealed: A towering, menacing half-human, half-ram.

Ingvar dead with his own hunting rifle and takes Ada back with him to live in the wild. When Maria discovers Ingvar’s body, she mourns before silently accepting what just transpired. It’s a strange ending, with relatively little said by the characters. New York’s Scandinavian House, as well as a separate interview with Inverse, Rapace elaborates on what the ending reveals about Maria. When we meet her, she’s not living.

She knows only be there for as long as she needs. She somehow always knew the Ram Man and that Ada will be taken away from her. A that he once had a nightmare about a giant ram. Before embarking on the Lamb press tour in the U. I went through one, and it was about huge rams eating polar bears. Lamb has no polar bear slaughters, but the monster of Jóhannsson’s dreams manifests through anger in the film. She doesn’t see him, but she knows.

That’s why in the end, her pain is released. It’s the beginning of a new chapter. It’s extremely painful, but she is there. But the baby doesn’t belong to her, as she eventually finds out the hard way. Rapace herself was raised on a farm in Iceland, where her grandmother imparted folk wisdom to her. I was always aware of things that are not there.

And if you cross that line and take something that is not yours to have, nature will hit back. They will avenge you and come after you. It’s almost like a love story or summer fling. That’s why at the end, she doesn’t come after the Ram Man. She doesn’t run to find Ada. She knows this was supposed to be.

She is back alive and awake. The production of Lamb included more animals than there were onscreen actors. Filmed during the last week of lambing season in Iceland, the movie features real animals, from sheep to dogs and cats, who appear onscreen with human behaviors like confusion, suspicion, anger, and pain. They’re just totally themselves, feeling safe. If they feel threatened or stressed, they start behaving not like themselves. There was things we wanted to do, but we couldn’t push them. Rapace also delivered real lambs from pregnant sheep on camera.