HITCHCOCK always said that it was a good idea for film-makers, when shooting in exotic climes, to incorporate the local colour. Set a Dutch thriller in a windmill. Have the hero in a San Francisco picture leap off the Golden Gate. That sort of thing.
The New Zealanders behind Black Sheephave taken this advice on board and offered us an entertainment in which the titular ruminants, mutated by a mad scientist, turn carnivore and launch themselves at their former herders.
This type of broad comic horror pops up about once a year (remember Tremors, Slitherand, erm, Frankenhooker) and killer farmyard animals were given similar treatment in Conor McMahon's Dead Meat. But it's great fun and, for those who give a hoot, makes some attempt to issue a warning against dabbling in genetic engineering.
As you might expect, the hero of the film (Nathan Meister), a farmer's son long resident in the city, suffered a trauma in his youth that left him with an irrational fear of all things ovine. When he returns home to clarify outstanding matters pertaining to his dad's will, he discovers that his evil brother has been up to experimental mischief with the livestock. Before long, he finds himself under attack from flocks of bloodthirsty sheep and at least one lurching were-sheep.
The script is not especially clever, but the film-makers' good fortune in securing the services of Weta, the special effects outfit that worked on Lord of the Rings, allows the mutant sheep a visceral, bloody substance rarely seen in low- budget horror. Indeed, the film features the most unsettling use of these habitually unthreatening creatures since Gene Wilder owned up to a terrible passion in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.
In short, not baaahd (sorry). DONALD CLARKE
