"Sheep Cubs" is a 2021 horror suspense film, for the Cannes Film Festival "a kind of attention" film list, starring Laumi La pace, the plot of a couple living in isolation on a remote mountain, running a sheep ranch.
One day there was a sheep-headed newborn in the flock, and the couple decided to regard him as their child, but all this was a turning point in a happy life, and a dark force was gradually approaching them!
"Sheep Cub" reminds people of another Swedish movie "Border", the pace is extremely slow, very patient in telling the whole story, like "warm boiled frog" let the audience step by step into the whole fantasy fantasy world, adapt to the story of the brain-opening magic species, bit by bit gradually throw out some amazing elements and story settings, so that we are completely immersed in it, but the moment the movie ends, suddenly realize what we just watched! What a crazy and creative hunting work this movie is!
The story content of "Sheep Cub" is actually very simple, even thin, a short story, through a very slow narrative rhythm, into a 106-minute feature film, the whole story can be finished in 3 sentences:
"A husbandry couple accidentally gets a sheep-headed child and adopts her as their son, but the child's true biological father and mother eventually come to the door to take revenge."
However, under the long story, the director has successfully added many philosophical propositions, and thrown out a lot of hidden irony about environmental issues, natural counterattacks, marriage crises and other hidden ironies through the lens language, and constructed an absurd dark fable work.
Since "The Sheep Cub" is a dark fable story of adults, what is the fable in the movie? Everyone's perspective is different, and they will interpret different meanings.
If you are simply in the presentation of the movie, it is to bluntly say that it is ironic that human beings are selfish to nature, in order to satisfy their own food and clothing, the sheep that should be alive and jumping in nature are raised in cages, and even the numbered plates are marked on the ears of the sheep, resulting in blood flowing from the ears of the sheep.
The camera even closes up the picture of the tractor mowing the grass, the huge machine running sound as if it is the sad sound of the grass, and the sheep man at the end of the movie is like the spokesperson of nature's counterattack, killing humans through shotguns.
Continuing from the previous paragraph, if you make up a little more, the sheep in "The Sheep Cub" is a hint at the devil, in Christianity the sheep's head has always been the visual image of Satan, and the sheep man in the movie is a symbol of the inner demon of mankind, the mother after having the little male sheep (the inner little devil began to grow), began to treat the sheep kindly, taking all the provisions of nature for granted, and the last sheep man was caused by the regurgitation of the inner demon after the fire was lost.
But I think this statement is too far-fetched, I myself was not convinced, I see that there is a hypothesis, if all the sheep men and the little male sheep in "The Sheep Cub" do not exist, it is just a metaphor?
In fact, the little male sheep is an allusion to the illegitimate child born to the heroine Maria Horn and Peter in the secret affair, and the husband Invar adopts the little male lamb as if he were raising a child who is not his own, but Invar accepts the insistence of his wife in order to maintain this marriage in name only (the evidence is that Invar has hidden and cried after the appearance of the little male sheep).
And Maria's mother who kills the little male sheep alludes to Maria killing her past self and wanting to get rid of the shackles of her past self, and the sheep man in the final ending is the embodiment of Peter, hiding in black leather to scare him, yearning for an unfettered free life.
"Sheep Cub" is a highly conceptual film, although the story content is only an auxiliary condiment, but through the accurate and sharp lens language, presents a strong cautionary irony, and the avant-garde style of hunting, absurd and unique metaphors, and rich in philosophical propositions of the big question, so that the film becomes a surprising dark horse, the direction of the plot also abandons the traditional routine, the viewing process is full of suspense, the ending reveals the shock of the truth, which is unforgettable for a long time!