Black Sheep

Director: Johnathan King

Starring: Nathan Meister, Danielle Mason, Peter Feeny, Tammy Davis

Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) and his brother Angus (Peter Feeny) are the fifth generation of farmers on a massive New Zealand sheep farm. During their childhood Angus played a horrible trick on his younger brother Henry, which gave him Ovinaphobia, the irrational fear of sheep. Years later Henry travels back to the farm from the city because Angus is planning to sell it and start a business revolutionising sheep farming. Unbeknown to Henry, Angus has been running a secret research laboratory on the farm trying to breed a better kind of sheep.

Two animal rights protestors, Grant (Oliver Driver) and Experience (Danielle Mason), break into the farm to try and steal evidence from the lab. One broken glass vile of toxic sheep matter later the sheep turn angry, and Henry's phobia turns out to be entirely justified.

It would be very hard to make a serious horror film about sheep; they are just intrinsically not very scary. Black Sheep, however, is a horror comedy, and a very good one at that. The horror comes from good old-fashioned horror movie special effects rather than CGI. Blood and guts spew from the human victims in a kind of over the top Brain Dead style, but used much less frequently. The actual sheep effects are very well done, it's even hard to tell the fake sheep from the real sheep extras, until they start biting that is.

Thankfully the comical side of Black Sheep does not rely solely on this being a film about the hobbies of killer sheep, that joke would get tiresome after a while. The actual script is very well put together with lots of one liners and even subtle humour that you wouldn't expect from a film like this. For example, when the protestors break into the farm they have this conversation: "This isn't going to be like the salmon farm is it, Grant?", "Hey! Those fish died free."

If that hasn't convinced you to see Black Sheep then how about this tagline: The sheep on this farm have turned to the baaaaaad side. Yeah, you're convinced now I know it.

Nick Grills