Black Sheep (2006)

MOVIE #1,174 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.03.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! I wasn't amused by this one. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood or something but there's a certain type of lower budget, mostly competent movie with a wacky premise and/or interesting design and specific effects (always from the last 20 years or so) that just rubs me the wrong way. Like they're going out about it with the sole intentions of trying to make a "cult" film from the onset. Trying not to be overly cynical here, folks. I swear. But that’s not the way you do it.

This movie was marketed as a comedy-horror (I mean look at the poster) but it is seriously low on laughs (read: there aren’t any), and even though I didn’t find it funny, I suppose you can sense that’s the tone it’s going for.

It’s about a New Zealand farm where genetically-mutated sheep start killing everyone and/or turning the victims that they don’t eat into hybrid sheep-human monster freaks. I was vaguely reminded of the slow, brooding A24 film Lamb. I liked that one, but it definitely suffered from being over-serious. If only these two could have met somewhere in the middle, AKA a place that couldn’t possibly exist outside of my imagination.

A major flaw here structurally is that the villain character, the architect of these aberrations and the older brother of our hero, is shown to be a major sociopath before the title card drops (in a flashback to their youth where he mutilates an innocent sheep just so he can use its skin and head to scare his little bro). There’s nowhere to go from there. When we see him in the present, we already know his whole deal.

There is some real repulsive body horror stuff in this, however, and some decent practical FX and character design, as mentioned…


And even some decent CGI stuff…


And the only comedic moment which comes close to hitting is at the very end, when a horde of farting sheep monsters have their passing wind set ablaze…


One more time, forever…


What am I saying I guess is that the movie needed either more fart jokes or less fart jokes. It’s a razor thin line we walk, this life.

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Black Sheep is a 2006 New Zealand comedy horror film written and directed by Jonathan King. It was produced by Philippa Campbell and stars Nathan Meister, Peter Feeney, Danielle Mason, Tammy Davis, Oliver Driver, Tandi Wright, Glenis Levestam, Nick Blake, Matthew Chamberlain, Nick Fenton, Eli Kent, and Sam Clarke. The special effects were done by Weta Workshop. It was released on September 10, 2006.