Icelandic sheep farmers get big surprise in ‘Lamb’

A24 Films’ latest atmospheric horror film will have you counting sheep — but not out of boredom.

Valdimar Jóhannsson’s directorial debut, “Lamb,” which opened in theaters Friday, is bound to leave audiences shaken — which is exactly the reaction star Noomi Rapace (photo) was hoping for.

Set in rural Iceland, the film sees the life of sheep farmers María (Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Guðnason) take a bizarre turn when one of their flock gives birth to a hybrid lamb-human and the childless couple decides to raise the strange creature as their own.

“I just felt like, wow, I’ve never seen this [before],” Rapace, a Swedish-born actress who moved to Iceland as a child, told the Daily News. “It triggered something in me . ... I felt like I’ve been waiting for this without knowing that it was exactly this I’ve been waiting for.”

Despite the disturbing premise — and the A24 Films pedigree, the independent production company known for such unsettling movies as “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” — Jóhannsson insists “Lamb” is “not a horror film” even though audiences may take it that way.

“It’s a classical story with this one fringe element,” the director, whose grandparents were also sheep farmers, told the Daily News.

Jóhannsson and his star were more concerned with staying true to the story than worrying what audiences would think.

“We didn’t really think about so much [about] ... how it was going to be received,” said Rapace. “We created something that was honest and very personal for us and then everything that’s happening now [the reception] is just overwhelming and amazing and quite a shock.

“I hope this film will be a movie that people revisit and talk about and that kind of awakens different conversations and emotions,” she added. “And not everyone needs to like it . ... A positive response is not always the best. I think we need to be shaken.”