Black Sheep (2006) Review

Black Sheep (2006) Review

 

According to the DVD cover of Black Sheep, “There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand…And they’re pissed off!” Now how about this for a killer animal premise? The docile, woolly farm animals are turned into bloodthirsty beasts—thanks to some genetic tampering, of course. It’s a horror comedy, set in New Zealand, made by New Zealanders, and it might just be one of the greatest killer animal movies ever made.

Henry Oldfield gets forever traumatized by his older brother Angus when Angus murders Henry’s pet sheep and surprises him in the barn on their family’s farm by wearing the bloody corpse of the sheep, then moments later, the brothers are informed their father has died. We skip ahead years later and Henry is returning to the farm to sell his share of it to Angus, but Angus has delved into genetic experimentation to make the best sheep he can. It leads to a couple environmentalists unleashing the fetus of a mutant sheep, which looks like something out of The Evil Dead. It bites an adult sheep, and soon the flocks are going mental. In addition to the sheep being hungry for human flesh, humans are also subject to mutation themselves, turning into half-sheep-half-human monsters!

Black Sheep takes a pretty zany premise and somehow delivers a genuinely great little film. They pulled out all the stops and brought aboard Weta Workshops, which is most famous for having done the special effects for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong remake. The effects for the sheep are a perfect blend of being high quality and realistic-looking while also looking purposefully exaggerated and kind of silly to accentuate the humour. Even though it tends more toward the comedic side of things, this really is a blend of horror and comedy. The sheep make some intense kills, and they don’t hold out on the blood and gore. At one point two characters fall into an offal pit, which is a hole filled with the guts of dead sheep. There’s no shying away from the carnage, and the sheep/human hybrid is the stand-out special effects moment.

The characters are all likable, and given proper setup before things get really crazy. One of the environmentalist characters, named Experience, is the kind of character who could have come off as really annoying and been someone you’d want to see get eaten by a sheep, but the way she plays off Henry and his friend Tucker makes for some really funny moments. At one point they narrowly escape driving off a cliff, and Experience says “Wow, long way down. I wouldn’t want to fall off there!” To which Henry plainly says: “This is where my father fell to his death.” The comedic timing is damn near perfect, and so much of the dialogue is laugh-out-loud funny.

There’s a lot going on here; it’s a bit like a zombie movie with people getting infected and turning into mutant hybrids and the scientists trying to experiment, in addition to the main characters trying to run away from the killer sheep. They probably could have still made a decently entertaining movie with just the killer sheep premise alone, but it makes it even better by going that extra mile and including the hybridism. There’s never too much going on, either. It’s a perfect balance of killer sheep madness and building up a cast of characters to root for, and that’s the key to its success: instead of just having a victims list, these are good characters, and instead of having a dull plot, it’s a varied story that’s well setup and has moments that pay off. I won’t spoil the ending, but here’s a hint: the fart jokes are more than just jokes, they’re foreshadowing.

Black Sheep sounds ridiculous, but for horror-comedy fans and/or killer animal movie fans, it hits all the right marks. It isn’t exceptional in every way—the music is generic and the first twenty minutes are a bit slow—but manages to take an unlikely animal and make it both a scary and funny antagonistic force.