Touches You

Too much of everything

Sadly Over-hyped

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I have seen worse. I have seen B-. I have seen crazy. So I was not surprised that I could sit through a movie which is a bit of all - more of the latter. A mostly grotesque & violent treatment with occasional cocky humor packaged into a preposterous plot line and best of all - plays it straight.Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) has left his countryside farm after his father's death and an incident which left him scared of sheep. He returns 15 years later to collect his share of the estate after his brother Angus Oldfield (Peter Feeney) an award winning farmer. When all seems going to plan, he stumbles on a nature loving girl Experience (Danielle Mason) who is out to expose Angus's illegal genetic experiments on sheep. When a hazardous genetic sample goes into the wrong hands and let lose, it causes mayhem by turning the entire herd into zombie version of the sheep.I reserve my comments on the overall performances - not sure if they were playing cocky or straight or intentionally goofy at times. Credit goes to the director who seems to know his way around creating slick tense scenes which is effectively edited and decently presented. The photography while being orthodox, still presents the lush landscapes of New Zealand country sides as beautiful as they are. CGI is still quite expensive during its making, so credit also goes into shooting the scenes where the sheep munches on what looks like human insides. The short run-time does a great job in not exhausting the viewer who probably would have started to think how ridiculous this movie actually is had it gone any longer.A par B movie that took this crazy premise as extreme as it could.

New Zealand was the country that made Peter Jackson's BRAINDEAD back in 1992. That film still stands strong as the goriest movie ever made, a near-perfect mix of gross-out humour, Kiwi insanity and copious bloodshed. When I saw that BLACK SHEEP, a similarly-themed film about genetically engineered sheep with an appetite for human flesh, was another Kiwi horror comedy, I was hoping it might reach near the standard of Jackson's work. Instead I found a film that simply ripped off that earlier, better movie – along with lots of other stuff like SHAUN OF THE DEAD. This is derivative film-making at its worst, totally lacking in any kind of inspiration and always striving to aim for the lowest common denominator.As the film begins with an unexplained incident – a kid kills and skins a sheep, wearing its bloody fleece to scare his little brother – you know that not much intelligence has gone into the script. Despite some typically pleasant New Zealand backdrops, the small scale antics that play out are utterly familiar and therefore pretty dull. Nobody in the unknown cast makes any kind of impression, and I was just waiting for a touch of originality or inspiration to come along and make me entertained. It never happened.The sheep bite people, transmitting a kind of virus that turns humans into rubbery sheep monsters. There's a last-reel attack by a flock of sheep full of cheesy gore effects with severed limbs and guts-aplenty, once again heavily indebted to BRAINDEAD. There's even a mutant lamb not too dissimilar from the Sumerian rat monster in the Jackson movie. The final solution to tackle the menace is about as lowbrow and unfunny as you can get, and never once did the film manage to raise itself from the doldrums. A below-par script, uninteresting performances (Danielle Mason is pretty but bland), laboured effects – from Weta workshop, the team who worked on LORD OF THE RINGS no less – and an overruling predictability make this one to miss.

Black Sheep, written and directed by Jonathan King is a wonderfully kooky horror comedy filmed out of New Zealand. Premise is simple, genetic tampering by unstable farmer man-child type has produced psychotic zombie sheep who like to chow down on human flesh. If you are "lucky" to still be alive after being bitten, you turn into a human/sheep hybrid - who likes to chow down on human flesh! All inhabitants of this island are doomed unless three spunky young heroes in waiting can overcome monumental odds and save the day!With effects done by Weta being no bad thing, Black Sheep is a whole bunch of popcorn munching fun. Many of the jokes aren't really surprising but they hit the mark because the comedy is drawn nice and broad. It helps as well that much of it carries a sense of mischievous depravity about it, while the snarky asides to scientists and tree hugging environmentalists shows King to have a semblance of world awareness about him. The cinematography (Richard Bluck) is gorgeous, capturing the magnificent landscapes as a backdrop to the ovine carnage, and Victoria Kelly's musical score is jovial supreme.Nothing earth shattering here, so those horror/comedy fans who venture in for the first time expecting otherwise will be disappointed. However, at under 90 minutes in length King's movie never once sags in pace or gasp for new comedic air. It's a short sharp shocker of a rib tickler and well worthy of a look if in the requisite mood. 7/10

I have to say this is an extraordinarily difficult title to review. I of course went into it expecting one of those movies that's so bad that it's funny (you know the ones--we all watch them eventually.) But what I got was so much more.Don't get me wrong, you still have to use that basic mentality and not take anything seriously, but the weird thing is...I think that's what the movie makers were doing as well. I swear, if you're one of those people who makes a ridiculous prediction, you will see most of them come true. Here were some of mine and a rough summary of the movie.A couple of annoyingly pro-environmentalists (complete with aggravatingly hipster girl and douschie boyfriend) steal some sort of demon/mutant/fetus sheep in a glass jar (literally directly in front of the scientists working on them.) Now I bet that fetus sheep's going to attack them. 10 minutes later, dousch-man falls, breaks jar, and gets his ear bitten off by a puppet/mutant/fetus sheep.Now, since this is some sort of sickening genetic experiment, I bet the man is now infected. Turns out he was! I bet he'll turn into a sheep-man. Slowly through the movie, we see him turn into...a MINOTAUR...I mean, a sheep-man. To be honest, they look kind of the same (not that minotaurs appear in the movie--that would be absurd.) And by that, I mean, the sheep-man actually looks badass, and is able to send the main guy (who coincidentally has an intense phobia of sheep--he had a messed up childhood) flying across a room with a minor backhand.Anyway, the fetus mutant sheep ends up mixing with a normal flock of sheep and, you guessed it. They all get infected. The hoard of demon sheep can now begin to take over the world. But we'll get there.As it turns out, the head of this scientist team (who I'm still not entirely sure what they are trying to do) turns out to be the douschy older brother of the main guy. He plans to present what I think is supposed to be the perfect sheep to a convention of scientists from around the world. But on the way there, he gets infected by the first sheep-man and eventually shares his fate. Rather than freak out, he accepts it fully. Fully to the point of heavily-implied bestiality with the "perfect sheep" which may or may not have been concocted from his own sperm.Somehow, his little brother also gets infected, and if you're guessing climactic, sheep-brother battle in the ruins of a sheep demon world, you'd guess right. I can't give too much away, but just know if I could recite this entire movie back to you, I would. This is truly a movie you just HAVE to see.As far as putting it through the movie gauntlet rating, I'd say it ranks pretty high. Acting: ranges from creepily good to laughably bad. Effects: surprisingly good and occasionally laughably bad (you're working with sheep demons here, give them a break.) Storyline: fairly ingenious (I couldn't best it if I had to use sheep as my antagonists.) Cinemaphotography: excellent. The wide shots of New Zealand grasslands are incredible at setting the mood. Climax: ultimate pay-off. You'll laugh until you cry.So overall, I'd say yes, I am a fan of Black Sheep. Looking at it from the perspective of a movie-maker, I find it inventive and entertaining. If you're someone who needs to analyze the psychological aspects or take notes on the motivation and backstory, this movie isn't for you (and you may have a disorder of some sort.) But if you're someone who can suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the absurd, you will love Black Sheep. I guarantee it.