[5][6][7] It stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman, Ashley Jensen, Ariane Labed, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Michael Smiley, and Ben Whishaw.

The hotel manager reveals that single people have 45 days to find a partner or they will be transformed into an animal of their choice (the dog accompanying David is his brother Bob).

Residents can extend their deadline by hunting and tranquilizing the single people who live in the forest, with each captured "loner" earning them an additional day.

[15] It was originally reported on 23 October 2013 that Jason Clarke would lead the cast, with support from Ben Whishaw, Léa Seydoux, Olivia Colman, Ariane Labed, and Angeliki Papoulia.

[16] Clarke dropped out of the film due to scheduling conflicts with Everest, and on 3 February it was announced that Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz would star in The Lobster.

[17] Elizabeth Olsen was approached to star in the film, but turned down the offer due to her commitments with Marvel Studios for Avengers: Age of Ultron.

[19] In May 2014, it was announced that Sony Pictures Releasing acquired the distribution rights for Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

The website's critical consensus reads, "As strange as it is thrillingly ambitious, The Lobster is definitely an acquired taste — but for viewers with the fortitude to crack through Yorgos Lanthimos' offbeat sensibilities, it should prove a savory cinematic treat".

[27] Oliver Lyttelton of The Playlist awarded the film an "A" grade and described it as "an atypically rich and substantial comedy" with "an uproarious yet deadpan satire concerning societal constructs, dating mores and power structures that also manages to be a surprisingly moving, gloriously weird love story".

[28] Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave a positive review and commended the film for being "visually stunning, narratively bold, and totally singular", adding that "it opens [one's] eyes to a new way of storytelling".

[29] Guy Lodge, writing for Variety, called the film "a wickedly funny, unexpectedly moving satire of couple-fixated society", elaborating that Lanthimos' "confounding setup emerges as a brilliant allegory for the increasingly superficial systems of contemporary courtship, including the like-for-like algorithms of online dating sites and the hot-or-not snap judgments of Tinder".

[30] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated the film three stars out of five, and wrote that The Lobster is "elegant and eccentric in Lanthimos' familiar style", but "appears to run out of ideas at its mid-way point".

[31] Similarly, reviews in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Vancouver Sun judged the film unable to sustain itself across its full runtime.

[35] Timothy Laurie and Hannah Stark, writing in the New Review of Film and Television Studies, praise The Lobster as "both a satire of compulsory coupling and an equally damning critique of libertarian individualism as an alternative to domestic monogamy".