10 Terrifying Horror Monsters That Only Need A Second To Scar You

3. The Father -- Lamb (2021)

Iceland: rarely the most forgiving locale on the planet. The barren landscapes, long winters, permafrost and remoteness all conspire to make this a difficult place for filmmaking, and yet Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb manages to capture the country’s sense of rural hardship and isolation and turn it into a striking, artistic and unsettling piece of folk horror.

The premise is simple: Icelandic farming couple Maria and Ingvar (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason) take a human-lamb hybrid that one of their flock produces into their home and raise her as their own. And while Ada, the titular lamb, could easily have been a body horror monstrosity, she’s not – once the initial shock of a human-sheep hybrid wears off, she’s actually rather sweet, with the dual nature of human child and animal coming through in fascinating ways that play upon the psyches of the childless couple.

But nothing can prepare them – or us – for when Ada’s real father shows up at the end of the film. We know his size and sounds before we meet him, but to lay eyes on him is something else. A towering ram-man hybrid, the creature returns to take his child and slays Ingvar in the process, downing him not with horns and might, but a shotgun. And it’s this unusually human approach that makes the attack all the worse, lodging it permanently in our minds.