Black Sheep

One wrong move, and these boys will have your throat out!

New Zealand. Sheep. Genetic experiments. What could possibly go wrong?

Black Sheep is a low-budget, but fun entry into the catalogue of zombie movies - and one that's carved it's own little niche by basing itself on sheep, the most numerous inhabitants of New Zealand.

I desperately, desperately want to say it was brilliant... but it wasn't. It wasn't awful, bad or even "meh" - I'd give it a "quite good" in a positive tone of voice.

I didn't have any problem with the effects (I actually rather enjoyed the use of obvious puppetry), nor with the storyline and dialogue. This was clearly a low budget effort from the off, and I'm very happy to accept that as a viewer.

Where I think it failed is that it couldn't make up its mind whether it should be seriously scary, or deliberately funny (and it's a mistake I think a lot of films in this genre make).

If you want to make a scary movie, then I think these days you have to do it really well. Cheap effects, poor  scripts, poor acting... all these things seriously detract from the quality of the film. Of course you can have humour in it - but if you want to make a scary movie, then that has to be at the core of the film you want to make.

If you're going to make a funny movie, then you have lots more leeway to use dodgy effects, an obvious storyline and predictable scary moments. But you have to be funny regularly throughout the film.

But get caught in the middle and you end up with a bit of a rubbish scary movie, and a bit of a rubbish comedy movie... and that's kind of where Black Sheep ends up.

Personally, I think they should have accepted that they were working with a low budget and therefore making a really good quality, scary movie was going to be difficult (unless they had an exceptionally talented crew, and committed 100% to the scariness throughout). I think they should have taken a good look at Shaun of the Dead and upped the humour content.

Not that I'm suggesting that "funny" is easy. Not a bit of it - it's very hard to do well (and Shaun is a harsh comparison, because that team has been together for quite some years, doing the excellent Spaced). But if you have obviously rubber sheep attacking people, I don't know that you've got much of a choice.

It's definitely one of those films that I enjoyed, but which leaves me frustrated that I'm not a movie maker myself - I'd love to redo Black Sheep and make it the brilliant film that it could be.

Zombies On Screen

Shuffling to a screen near you soon...

The past few years has definitely seen a revival in the zombie-genre, so much so that zombie films and TV series are pretty much mainstream entertainment. Especially so, if you combine it with the closely related pandemic virus and other similar genres.

Whatever the protagonist - reanimated corpses, flu-infected humans, walking carnivorous plants - the really scary thing isn't them, it's the sudden collapse of society. In the space of a few hours, days or (occasionally) weeks, the heroes of the story are wrenched from their comfortable lives as office workers, teachers, nurses, policemen or telephone sanitation engineers and thrown into a world without friends, family, electricity, running water or law. Not even a regular helping of The One Show.

I'll leave the analysis of the zombie genre to a later post - for the moment I want to name-check a few of my favourite, and not-so-favourite on screen (big and small) zombie romps. Note that I'm going to use a very wide definition of "zombie story", to cover all the pandemic virus and similar stories. Frankly having to write that out each and every time will drive me nuts - so if you object to me including pandemic flu and Triffids in zombie discussions... well, that's just tough.

The Day of the Triffids

Talking of Triffids, where better to start? Walking carnivorous plants, escaping into the world just after the vast majority of the population is struck blind in a meteor shower? Great stuff!

The film in the 1950s? Meh. Their Achilles' Heel was ridiculous. Fail.

But the 1980s TV series - that was another matter entirely: brilliant. The recent TV remake? Not brilliant, but pretty decent. I'd still take the '80s effort over the modern version.

Dawn of the Dead

Utter classic. The 1970s movie, that is. Genre-defining brilliance. The recent remake? Dreadful. Running zombies? Give me strength. That suggests intelligence, which kind of defies the point of "proper", undead zombies. If they're going to be undead, stupid, shuffling zombies, how do they suddenly find the ability to sprint? Either they're stupid or not - you can't have it both ways.

28 Days Later

Yet the running zombies in 28 Days Later are perfectly acceptable: the scenario of living, infected humans (as opposed to reanimated corpses) - more to the point, infected with the "Rage" virus - now that left the infected with understandably ability and good cause to run. Good film.

28 Weeks Later

Whereas the sequel was dreadful. All-too predictable - with characters doing ridiculously stupid and unbelievable things time and time again. Rubbish.

The Walking Dead

Now this one's a little complex, because there are many strands to The Walking Dead - so I'll cover it in more depth later. But I'll just say very briefly that as regards the TV series... meh. Again, too many people doing predictable horror-story stupid things, and too many things that just stretch your suspension of disbelief to breaking point.

Sean of the Dead

Now this is more like it! What should you do in a zombie apocalypse? Head to the pub, naturally. 10/10.