Black Sheep

Introduction

Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) is returning to the family farm for the first time in a while. Fifteen years previously, on the same day his dad fell over a cliff chasing a lamb, his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) had induced a lifelong fear of sheep on him with the jealous and needless slaughter of his pet sheep Dudley. Henry has been in therapy for a while now, and his therapist has suggested returning to the farm and selling his share to Angus as part of this therapy.



Meanwhile, inept environmentalists Experience (Danille Mason) and Grant (Oliver Driver) have heard rumours that Angus is engaging in genetic engineering of livestock and are looking for evidence. As it turns out, Angus is trying to create a new superior breed of sheep (called the Oldfield, oddly enough) using discredited scientist Dr Rush (Tandi Wright). Grant is a little too enthusiastic and manages to steal a sample from a case awaiting disposal before an accident in the nearby woodlands causes a genetically modified unborn lamb foetus to escape. The foetus has a bloodlust and bites both Grant and a curious sheep, and the bloodlust transfer onto each. Soon all the nearby sheep are infected and raging zombie killers.

Henry and Experience join forces and with the help of farm manager Tucker (Tammy Davis), they try to work out what is happening whilst fleeing from hordes of braying sheep, baying for blood. Meanwhile, Angus is planning the unveiling of his new breed at a specially convened fete on his land with interested buyers from Europe and Japan. Unfortunately lamb is the one thing not on the menu…

Visual

Excellent clear sharp picture with some glorious shots of the New Zealand landscape, one shot in particular paying homage to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Weta Workshops (who else in New Zealand?) provide the animatronic effects for the killer sheep with their usual attention to detail, although they also borrowed a couple of people from Revenge of the Sith to do their main creature design.

Audio

Choice of both 5.1 Surround or 2.0 Stereo with English Hard of Hearing subtitles. I only listened to the 5.1 track and it's very good with lots of wet squelchy noises (and that doesn't include the farting sheep) but a little more care could have been taken with the channel separation on a couple of occasions when it feels blatantly artificial - this is a minor complaint overall though.

Extras

Commentary - nice yak track with director Jonathan King (er, no. not that one…) and star Nathan Meister

Making Of - last about half an hour and is not bad, thankfully whilst Weta Workshops are featured heavily in this extra, it doesn't get as anal or annoying as it sadly did on the LOTR discs.

Deleted Scenes - all of these were cut for timing, although some contain quite good performances (especially Tammy Davis). Can be played with or without commentary from Jonathan King.

Blooper Reel - I used to love It'll Be Alright On The Night, but sadly they don't do bloopers like they used to…

Trailer

Overall

Mutated animals have always featured in films, but I've never seen one that featured killer sheep before. Maybe that's because no one has ever considered the horror value of our four legged woolly friends. Maybe because they haven't lived in New Zealand with 40 million of the buggers and can't imagine quite what it would be like if they all got a tad p***ed off with their humdrum existence of grazing.

This is clearly not a film that is taking itself seriously at all. Some of the dialogue is a little forced but some of it is genuinely funny. The gore, and there's a lot, is suitably over the top and again is more in line with the comedic tone than genuine horror. There are homages to several films on show here, the main one being American Werewolf In London with the transformation from man to sheep. Every sheep joke you can think of is in here somewhere, bar sheep dip (how did they manage to miss that one?), and there are some very funny sight gags - not least the blur of wool as another sheep leaps through the air and rips out someone's throat.

Environmentalists have taken a bit of a battering in mainstream films in the last few years (see Resident Evil and Shaun of the Dead amongst others) and this film is no different in that despite the grotesque research carried out by scientists, it is the activist environmentalists who cause the disasters. Quite frankly, I'm quite happy to see this as activists generally lose the argument in my book when they lose patience in the art of persuasion and resort to direct action, often behaving worse than those they protest about. Still, the character of Grant is a joy to watch in the portrayal by Oliver Driver, his disgust and remorse plainly showing to great comedic effect as the infected vegetarian gives in to his bloodlust.



Most of the acting is not brilliant but competent enough to carry this film, and let's face it, the 800 odd sheep are the stars here. Peter Feeney, though, has more than a touch of Bruce Campbell about him and his passion for his sheep is made quite plain in the script. It's good that New Zealand folk have the ability to laugh at themselves in this regard, not quite convinced from feedback I've seen on iMDB that this humour (which is so English by the way) translates well abroad, particularly in the US.

Excellent comedy, I laughed most of the way through it and the ending was inspired.