Black Sheep

As soon as the poster for Black Sheep was released bearing the slogan "There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand and they're pissed off!" it seemed clear that it would be yet another silly horror spoof. The strange thing is that it's actually much more self-serious than it seems. It doesn't wink or nudge like other horror comedies. It doesn't even slyly deadpan it's clunky lines and familiar scares. It mostly just follows the model established by creature features of the past. From the vaguely ominous, pulsing score to the dark rooms viewed from the shaky perspective of some thing lurking in the shadows, it's all pretty much what you've seen before. Even the basic setup comes from the good old book o' horror cliches. We meet a young kid who suffers some childhood trauma and then we flash to the future as he returns home for the first time in his adult life, unaware that he'll have to come face to face with the demons of his past. The catch is that instead of Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, the Bogeyman, or even Gremlins, the demons of his past are the sheep from his childhood farm. Then there's some sci-fi mumbo jumbo genetic experiment and suddenly the herd is hungry for flesh. You get the picture. It's all very goofy but the delivery is very direct, making some great comedy from things as ludicrous as sheep fear but also keeping the film very much in the tradition of basic horror. This should probably be categorized as an unorthodox horror film instead of a horror comedy. The creators clearly knew they were being cheeky by selecting such fluffy villains but their straightforward strategy plays by the rules more than it mocks them. And even if meticulously replicating the traditional horror formula is one of the film's means of genre satire, it still makes the movie tedious in parts, particularly during the pre-infection introductory scenes.

The biggest surprise is that somehow the sheep are actually kind of creepy. You'd think it would be a total laugh to see them on the offensive, but they do inspire unexpected chills. Kudos to the makeup and effects crew for turning the barnyard's most adorable animals into bonafide horrors. When the ravenous flock finally makes its move, the movie comes alive with goofy frights. Sadly, the characters are such flat drones that their lives carry no real value. Again there is a sense that their vacuous dialogue is meant to mimic that of the annoying horror victims of years passed, but it's never funny enough to make us forgive Black Sheep for forcing its own one-note whiners upon us. The aforementioned lead protagonist Henry, (Nathan Meister) who fears sheep even before they turn into mutant killers, is mostly just frantic and frustrating. The fun of this movie is in the outlandish sheep encounters. Elsewhere, the characters merely sputter dialogue I couldn't care less about. The primary culprit being Experience, (Danielle Mason) an awfully written environmentalist character who thinks that pointing on the contribution of sheep farting to the Greenhouse Effect makes her worldly. I can't tell if she's meant to mock environmentalists or simply there to try to balance out the science wary tone of the film's central dilemma. The scientists responsible for making the sheep into killers look and act absolutely crazy, so maybe by making their greatest rival amongst the characters bonkers, it saves writer/director Jonathan King from having to declare a side on the issue. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. There is so much lunacy here that no deeper message could ever have emerged. Eventually the loony scientists cook up a new mutant race of sheep people and what perhaps was a tiny stab at a Frankenstein-ish critique of overreaching science just becomes the dumbest plot device ever.

The one thing that almost saves this movie is that the sheep attacks actually work. They're silly and fun but they also pack more bite than most modern horror massacres. Being able to laugh and cringe at the same time is quite a unique pleasure. I wish the rest of the movie had the same level of wild imagination as the man vs. sheep showdowns. By film's end, the characters have only become more obnoxious, the thin narrative has been stretched to accommodate bizarre and unfunny levels of gross out gore, and the camp appeal of a sheep with bloodstained chompers has ended.

Grade: C+