Black Sheep

            Screw introductions, let's get on with it.

            On to the review!

            I am actively watching Black Sheep and it is amazing.  Arriving from New Zealand in 2006, it's a film about the horrors of genetic testing.  More specifically, it's about how we can make anything deadly if we try hard enough.  What is the dumbest, least intimidating creature we regularly encounter?  If you said 'sheep' then congratulations, you read the title of the movie.

            Think about it.  Domesticated to the point where if mankind were to die out, they would die out.  Too dumb to protect themselves from predators, too harmless to intimidate anyone in their right mind.  Sheep are the anti-scary.  So congratulations to writer/director Jonathan King for making an entertaining horror film that actually manages to make sheep believably dangerous.

            Sure there's a plot and actors and stuff, but come on.  It's a horror movie called Black Sheep.  Fuck your plot.  All you need to know is that a genetic experiment went wrong, turning sheep into insane, homicidal carnivores.  Meanwhile, there are two brothers on opposite sides of the genetic debate, a few innocent field hands, less innocent scientists, and a pair of crazy PETA-types.

            Oh yeah, and anyone bitten by an infected sheep may or may not start morphing into a killer man/sheep hybrid.  I don't know, I haven't gotten that far yet.

            Roughly 30 minutes into the film, I started to think about how similar the style was to horror classics like Bad Taste and  DeadAlive (a.k.a. Braindead).  Then I had that 'no shit' moment.  During the opening to Black Sheep they straight up announced 'effects by WETA,' the special effects company used by Peter Jackson for pretty much every film ever.  There's a selling point if ever there was one.

            Ohh, yes there are man/sheep killer hybrids.  Ah-duhhhh.   Like you didn't guess.  Also, found a Wilhelm Scream.

            While still your standard killer creatures horror movie, it's got a good sense of humor and enough intelligence to deliver something less-than-predictable in its key scenes.  It most certainly improves upon older creature features like *shudder* Night of the Lepus.  Hell, while not nearly as crazily violent, it's just as much fun as Dead Alive.

            Now if you'll excuse me, I have a climax involving sheep mutants to watch.