Black Sheep: A Film to Know New Zealand By

Black Sheep was the title of a comedy movie starring Chris Farley and David Spade, however, now the title will be remembered for something else entirely! Black Sheep is the title of a horror movie released on Dvd, and though the sheep aren't actually black, it is a dark adventure indeed.

Black Sheep was written and directed by Jonathan King and was made in New Zealand. You probably wouldn't recognize many of the cast members names, however the premise of the story is one you would never forget. The plot: An experiment in genetic engineering turns harmless sheep into blood-thirsty killers that terrorize a sprawling New Zealand farm.

The opening of the film has a soundtrack that reminded me of some epic piece like Batman or Lord of the Rings, with the Lord of the Rings connection actually being made in less than 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon via Peter Jackson's special effects department having worked on Black Sheep. Weta Workshops bring high quality special effects to what sounds like a B-movie low quality film and the mixture of the two concepts, high budget work in a low budget setting: make excellent bed fellows, or barn fellows, or whatever. The movie looks great and applause goes out for all involved with the creature effects and gore. There is plenty of gore I must add.

This is a comedy horror with most of the comedy being in the premise and the imagery involved with normal looking sheep going crazy, attacking, and eating people. The plot is then your basic creature-feature survival type which picks up with energy and comes to an explosive ending. Actually the ending is very corny and silly, but even still it made me chuckle; I tired not to.

The acting in the film is fine and dandy, even though the stars are outshined by the makeup and special effects, their ability to work around them and with them was admirable. See: not only are there killer sheep, but also when a sheep bites another creature it turns into a weresheep sort of beast, so there are large half-human, half-sheep creatures also running around. Mayhem I tell you; mayhem!