Besides, it's irrelevant, given that Black Sheep is actually pretty nifty.
I first saw this one a few months back, after years of dithering. On the one hand, it was an eco-themed horror comedy featuring killer sheep, so what was not to love? On the other, wet effects came courtesy of Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop, and when it comes to gore I'm a screaming chicken-wuss - it was a title I really wanted to see but just didn't quite dare. Eventually, however, it showed up one Sunday morning on catch-up TV, and I decided I absolutely had to give it a go.
Probably unsurprisingly, the film is set in (and funded by) New Zealand, and deals with a pair of brothers who own a sheep farm. Henry, the younger brother, was always the more natural farmer, but a spiteful prank by his brother, Angus, left him with a phobia that led him to flee to the city. As an adult, Henry returns to the farm on the advice of his therapist in order to let Angus buy out his share. Once there, however, he soon discovers that all his worst nightmares are rapidly becoming true.
The good
File this one under criminally unappreciated. By all rights, this should be a classic of the comedy horror subgenre, bringing the laughs and the shocks with equal ease. If anything, however, it seems to have become a victim of its own success in straddling the genre divide, with horror fans objecting to the levity and the grand guignol levels of gore proving offputting to everybody else.An alternative explanation might be that gags about farmers fucking sheep have ceased to be funny, but does anybody really believe that? You might just as well say there's nothing amusing about sweary old ladies with guns. Black Sheep provides both with gusto - well, not literally with gusto, since gusto translates to taste, but certainly with bucketloads of enthusiasm.
The enthusiasm is key, I think. At no point do you ever get the impression that anybody was trying to make anything other than a really good comedy horror movie. Our heroes, for the most part, behave reasonably intelligently, except when previously established motivations get in the way - the hippie animal liberationists being naive, for instance, or Henry's phobia causing him to panic. If somebody does something stupid, it's always possible to pinpoint why.
Effects work, too, is entirely appropriate for the subgenre - appealingly wet and with more of an eye for artistry than for realism. The puppetry, when it occurs, is superb, but nobody ever loses sight of the fact that a bunch of sheep in a field staring blankly can be pretty creepy in and of themselves. A bunch of sheep in a field munching on the entrails of the group of business executives they've just bloodily slaughtered, on the other hand, that's entertainment.
It's possible to argue that acting and characterisation are irrelevant to a film of this type; that all that's really required is for the leads to look appealing and hit the right one-liners. As hippie girl Experience and former farmboy Henry respectively, however, Danielle Mason and Nathan Meister are absolutely note-perfect, turning what might have been caricatures into fully-rounded human beings the audience can really root for.
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