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RATING |
| 6 |
| DIRECTOR |
| Jonathan King |
CAST |
Nathan Meister
Danielle Mason
Oliver Driver
Tammy Davis
Peter Feeney
Glenis Levestam |
YEAR |
| 2006 |
RUNTIME |
| 87 minutes |
DATE REVIEWED |
| 8 / 27 / 07 |
SHOPPING |
| BUY THIS FILM |
| REVIEWER: FrighT MasteR |
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RATE THIS MOVIE:
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RATED BY:
36 FAN(S) |
CURRENT RATING:
7.28 SKULL(S)
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Black Sheep
Black Sheep is the latest installment in the splatter sub-genre that was seemingly started with the works of Peter Jackson, namely the brilliant New Zealand film Dead Alive in 1992. Many films have tried to duplicate the comedy and ridiculously excessive gore, but have failed to capture neither the comedic aspect, nor came even close to the amount of gore Dead Alive had to offer. With the genre going back to its New Zealand roots, Black Sheep attempts to at least give us a small portion of what Dead Alive made famous and comes out as one of the better attempts at the sub-genre, despite its many flaws.
From newcomer Jonathan King, the premise follows a man (who happens to have a fear of sheep due to a childhood incident) who returns to his New Zealand farm to discover that his older brother is the mastermind behind a new breed of genetically altered sheep. After a couple activists foolishly steal a failed specimen and break its casing in their escape, the beast begins contaminating anything it sinks its teeth into, essentially turning other sheep and people into mutated blood-thirsty killers. The movie starts off pretty solid, but the script slowly gets thinner and more absurd as it progresses, eventually leading to the half-assed climax. On the other hand, the gore and conventional effects were well done thanks to the talented guys Weta Workshop (Lord of the Rings trilogy). The comedy and dialogue didn't really work for me, but it had an overall comedic tone that made the situations these characters run into fairly entertaining.
We get some interesting mutations when the sheep take bites out of humans and there's a lot of nice blood and guts splattered around, especially during a sequence where the sheep terrorize a group of investors at an outdoor meeting. Despite all its flaws and half-assed ending, the movie is an overall fun watch, with enough gore to please any fans of the genre. The concept of killer sheep seemed like an interesting and original take on the genre, but it's apparently not as original as it may seem, with word that a Spanish screenwriter (whom copyrighted his script and shopped it around to various studios in 2001) is claiming that the guys behind this film stole his idea for his script "Killer Sheep". Coincidence?
OVERALL
The film started out strong, but became too ridiculous as it progressed, ultimately leading to its seemingly half-assed climax. Despite that, it does offer a fun comedic overall tone and enough gore to please us fans, so it's worth a check when it hits DVD in October.
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JUST RENT IT, its funny.
brillant!