Black Sheep

Here’s a movie that should have been a riot. Zombie sheep. Genetic experiments gone wrong. Weresheep. Yes, weresheep. And it’s shot in New Zealand, with Peter Jackson’s early splatter classics casting a long shadow over every frame.

The problem? It never commits to its own insanity.

Jonathan King’s Black Sheep starts promisingly enough. Young Henry returns to the family farm to find his brother Angus playing mad scientist with the livestock. Environmental activists break in. A mutated lamb escapes. Soon the sheep are attacking humans, and anyone bitten transforms into a sheep-human hybrid. The premise writes itself.

The special effects are first-rate. When the transformations happen, they’re gruesome and detailed. The New Zealand countryside looks gorgeous, all rolling green hills that become increasingly blood-soaked. The deadpan Kiwi humor lands.

All the pieces are there, but King can’t figure out what movie he’s making. Is it horror? Comedy? Ecological thriller? Family drama? In serving four masters, he satisfies none.

The pacing drags. Instead of throwing us into chaos, we get backstory. Lots of it. Character relationships. Exposition about the genetic experiments. The film talks when it should be running. Night of the Living Dead understood something fundamental: Get to the monsters fast, fill in the details later.

And those weresheep. What a wasted opportunity. They lumber around like generic monsters. Where’s the sheep behavior? Where’s the absurdist comedy of someone transforming from the waist down first? Where’s the over-the-top carnage that should come from a half-human, half-sheep monstrosity? Peter Jackson would have milked every ridiculous moment.

I know, I know—it’s unfair to compare every gory New Zealand horror-comedy to Jackson. But making this kind of film in this location is like shooting a zombie movie in Pittsburgh. You’re asking for it.

Black Sheep isn’t bad. It’s something worse: forgettable. By the time the credits roll, you’re left wondering what might have been if someone had simply unleashed the madness and let it run wild across those beautiful hills.

The sheep deserve better.