£3 Film: Black Sheep

Mutant-zombie Sheep? Perhaps there’s a good reason why nobody had tried this concept before, and after Black Sheep, no one ever will again.

I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to any film that is attempting to try something new and different, and surely nobody has attempted to frame sheep as the main antagonist within a horror film. Obviously those behind Black Sheep couldn’t do this without wandering into comedy-horror territory – which is fine, but such territory is already highly congested with other, certainly better, titles, and ultimately, Black Sheep’s crazy premise can’t rise above crippling flaws.

Black Sheep is set in the flowing hills of New Zealand, where Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) is returning, after 15 years away, to his family farm to meet with his brother Angus (Peter Feeney), who wishes to buy his share in his families estate. Here he discovers, with the aid of green activist ‘Experience' (Danielle Mason) and farmhand Tucker (Tammy Davis) that Angus has been endeavouring (surprise, surprise) in a bit of genetic engineering to create the perfect sheep. Obviously these sheep have their problems, namely a taste for human flesh, and when bitten sheep start turning violent and the people the sheep bite start turning into sheep themselves (yeah, really), Henry and his ‘gang’ must...well, save the day; cue sheepish action.

Probably the main problem with Black Sheep is it really isn’t actually that funny despite the promises of a horror-comedy along the lines of Shaun of the Dead. While Shawn of the Dead focused upon witty banter and some damn good gags, many of which are incidental to the fact that there are zombies, Black Sheep seems to rely entirely upon the novelty factor of ‘Hey look! sheep are attacking and eating people, ain’t that Crazy?’ as a basis for laughs. Sometimes, this does happen – sure seeing sheep attacking people is sometimes hilarious – but for those scenes where people aren’t getting mauled by sheep, there is very little in the form of laughs and when the gags are present, the rather meagre acting and writing means that these ultimately fall flat.

Even when the action starts, things do not necessarily get any better. Sure it’s silly, over top, and dumb enough to get some laughs, but most of the time it is less than compelling. Really, I never found it exciting because there didn’t seem to be any tension, any build up to the conflict between man and beast and never any sense of danger, especially in the man vs man-sheep (...erm yeah) conflicts, which are further hampered by some dark lighting – most probably to cover up the dubious physical effects. Not that this bothered me, but there isn't even a fleeting attempt to make any aspect of the film 'scary' (not even attempting to throw in some cheap jump scares). Overall, it just felt rather dull and even though the action took a while to kick in and the running time was only around 80 minutes, but the end I was just willing it to stop!

Perhaps this is a fault of the acting - and I’d say it probably is. None of the character portray the sense of danger very well which further impedes the issues above. Nor are they in any way compelling, which I guess is a problem with the writing as much as the actors themselves. At no point did I feel any real connection to the characters, which I guess is difficult to do in films which such silly premises as this, but it certainly is possible (let’s return to our tired example of Shaun of the Dead).

Overall, Black Sheep just isn’t a very good movie in any respects, not even for the novelty ‘it’s so bad its good’ factor. I give props to those behind it choosing such a strange and unique premise – but what Black Sheep demonstrates clearly is one unique idea doesn’t make up for key and basic flaws. There are just better Horror-Comedies out there, so much better that this isn’t really even worth a look.