At Christmas, one of their ewes gives birth to a very special lamb and the two adopt it as their own.
No good will come of this.
CW: animal births
Well. This kind of falls into the "what the fuck did I just watch" category until it's sunk in.
If you're thinking of watching this, perhaps don't read further as I think it pulls a great feat of subtlety but I can't say much more without spoilering it and once you read it you won't be able to unsee it.
Nominally pigeonholed as folk horror, the overwhelming majority of the run time is a weird slow and quiet domestic tableaux where something is just "not right". It's implied the couple lost a daughter and are filling that void but also that 'Ada' has a magnetism or familiarity that causes people to accept her. This is particularly noticeable when Ingvar's brother appears.
As it builds to a conclusion the ending is almost too obvious but also made me suddenly question my assumptions about what I was watching.
On the lowest level it's a massively slow burn folk horror with a "weird child" and that's what I was consuming it as. These things are ten a penny.
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It's also an allegory for slave owners who take one of the children of their "property" as their own.
When you sit back at the end suddenly it falls into place in what might be the subtlest bit of filmmaking I've watched for a long while. It's like a magic eye painting that suddenly turns 3D. It's possible I've read too much into it and it really is a weird fairy tale with hybrid sheep people that are looked down upon as 'animals', but I'm not convinced.
10/10 highly recommended but if you just want a folk horror (which it also is) you'll get about 5/10.