Seeing Black Sheep in a packed, sold out crowd of raving gorehound, genre-fans was a perfect viewing experience. Watching it under the right set of circumstances helped to make a pretty cool little genre-pic a ton of fun. Everyone was cheering when something cool happened, cringing during the rampant gore, and laughing whenever one of the crazy-mad sheep stared psychopathically at the camera. The last time I had this much fun in a theatre was the opening night of SLiTHER, a similarly themed and executed cinematic throwback to the video '80s.
Black Sheep's premise is a stroke of stupid, lucky, brilliance, and I wonder why it took so long to be done. God knows there are a ton of sheep in New Zealand. Supposedly, the sheep outnumber the people ten to one. The film examines, in gory detail, what might happen if a genetically altered sub-species of homicidal sheep were introduced into the indigenous population. Sheep-hell on Earth in other words. Mix in a lead character who, as fate would have it, suffers from extreme sheep-phobia, his evil sheep-loving brother, a granola-munching enviro-hippy, an evil lab scientist, a hero ranch-hand, and a ton of bodily cannon-fodder, and there you have it: an hour and a half of gut munching, woolly fun!
Being made in New Zealand, and with effects by WETA, Black Sheep will surely join the ranks of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and Braindead (Dead Alive), and rightly so. While I did not enjoy as much as these two timeless gore-flicks, it does hit most of the right notes. Where other recent genre-offerings like Undead and Evil Aliens fail miserably, Black Sheep totally excels. First of all, even though it is quite gory, and it does have more than a few disturbing sequences, it never feels mean spirited, or spiteful - two traits that Undead and Evil Aliens swim in. Black Sheep strikes the prefect balance of violence and fun. It is a film that demands to be laughed with, not at, and a film that remains entertaining throughout.
While most of the film is pretty solid, Black Sheep suffers from pedestrian direction and cinematography; it lacks the creative aesthetic drive to make it a stand out picture. For the most part, the framing and shot selection are rather mundane, and the camera is almost never used to bolster the atmosphere, or create a tangible sense of energy. The one instance it is used to heighten the tension, it's so shaky and poorly edited that it made me a little sick. The characters also feel rather dull, and they never register any real feelings of terror or astonishment. I mean, there are blood-thirsty weresheep for the love of Pete, come on, wake up and freak the heck out! If it wasn't for the absurd premise, and the crazed sheep themselves, say if they had been replaced by regular old zombies, I doubt the film would offer enough to be very memorable at all.
However, Black Sheep more than makes up for these shortcomings when it comes to the sheep themselves, and the incredible situations the characters find themselves in. This is an example where the idea behind the film is better than the technical execution of the film itself. Anytime a sheep is involved in anything, the film is good. Whether it's the little deformed fetus-sheep that hobbles along after its victims, or a sheep busting through a door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or the pit of discarded sheep babies the heroes have to crawl through, or a whole heard of crazy, bloodthirsty sheep ripping through a small audience of farmers and scientists, the sheep make the movie. The sheep make the movie. Without the sheep, there wouldn't be much to talk about, at all.
I don't mean to disparage the film too much, because it really is a good time, especially if seen with the right group of people. It is fun, funny, gory, and goofy, and the premise is just to gonzo and wacked-out to pass up. If only everything else about the film was able to match the creativity of its premise, it really could have been something amazing. But as it stands, it is still pretty good, and where else will you see a bunch of weresheep eating the intestines of their fallen comrades?
