10 Best Monster Horror Movies Of The 2020s (So Far)

Something's rotten in the state of Iceland, and odds are it's the lamb. A24 has been going hell for leather this past decade, releasing a succession of original, thought-provoking horror movies quite unlike anything we've seen before. Amongst these is Valdimar Jóhannsson's Lamb, which focuses on Icelandic farmer couple María (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason), whose lives are altered by one of their sheep birthing a human-lamb hybrid named Ada.

This rather questionable predicament becomes unintentionally funnier the more it goes unmentioned: given Ingvar is the only man for miles, did he... well, did he take a liking to the sheep that birthed Ada? This conundrum is, finally, put to bed when Ada's true father eventually turns up.

Despite suspicions and fears, the lamb at the core of the story is not the monster we should be afraid of, only its offspring. A nightmarish ram-man hybrid - the one we see only shadows of in the first scene - comes to claim Ada in Lamb's conclusion, leaving devastation and horror in its wake.

A spacious meditation on loss in isolation, Lamb spends the bulk of its runtime trying to offer an unconventional second chance to a couple stricken by a miscarriage. But the long shadows of monster and body horror are always just a stone's throw away, never allowing the tension to subside.