BLACK SHEEP

New Zealand, 2006, 87 minutes, Colour.
Nathan Meister, Danielle Mason, Peter Feeney, Tammy Davis, Glenis Levestam, Tandi Wright.
Directed by Jonathan King.

This is no nursery rhyme, politely enquiring whether the black sheep have any wool! Rather, it is a very successful blend of horror and deadpan humour. It is as if the writer-director, Jonathan King had a dream in which he asked Alfred Hitchcock and Peter Jackson whether he could combine their influences, Hitchcock’s The Birds and Jackson’s macabre early films like Brain Dead; they must have both said yes and King went on to further dreams concocting Black Sheep.

He capitalises on the New Zealand landscapes around Wellington (and the many sheep) so that the film could only take place in this location. He draws on the long tradition of genetic experiment films so that monstrous specimens are produced – and, of course, they bite people. First off is an ideological environmental protestor who, in turn, bites the landowner and proud backer of the experiments. Then all his guests get it in the neck, so to speak – and the mad doctor and her staff. We get a variation on the Dawn of the Dead Ewes and Rams.

This all works better than usual because it avoids the cliches of young things in peril and concentrates on the adults. It plays the horror straightforwardly as well as for laughs. With the humorous dialogue and some deadpan, audiences will find themselves sometimes really laughing out loud. And, there are a lot of NZ sheep jokes.

King’s menacing sheep are like Hitchcock’s birds – they only have to be there to be frightening. Intermingled with the splatter and the jokes, King has achieved what he set out to do.

1.A successful black comedy? A successful blending of horror and laughs? Satire?

2.New Zealand the only possible setting? The atmosphere, the hills, the farm, the sea, the laboratory, the sheep grazing?

3.The verbal wit, the dialogue, capitalising on the horror genre, using the conventions, spoofing them, audience expectations – and fulfilment? The musical score?

4.The introduction, the sheep grazing, New Zealand, the jokes about sheep, the farmer and the kids rounding up the sheep, the sheep dogs? Henry, the axing of his favourite sheep? The boys frightening him in the barn? His trauma? His father’s death? Mrs Mac looking after him? The clash with Angus?

5.Henry as an adult, returning home, the taxi, the meter running and the long journey, the sheep blocking the way and his nerves, the experience and the trauma, talking about his therapy? Arrival, Mrs Mac? looking after him, the taxi waiting? The meeting with Angus, their clash, the jokes about therapy, Angus writing the cheque? Mrs Mac? giving Henry a meal? Meeting Tucker, going on the tour with him? The encounter with Experience? With Grant? The attack?

6.Grant and Experience, getting over the fence, their ideological beliefs, watching the laboratory, the doctor and the staff, stealing the canister, the pursuit, Grant in the woods, tripping, his being transformed? Becoming gory, eating the rabbit? The haunted look? Experience and her escape, meeting Henry and Tucker, attacking their attitude? The confrontation? The humour of Experience’s jargon about the environment, various New Age therapies? Their joining forces? The pursuit?

7.The lab, the doctor, ruthless? The commercial venture? Genetically modified sheep? The visitors, Angus and his rehearsal, the disaster of the meeting, the sheep? His meeting Grant on the road, bitten? The prize sheep? The presentation, the sheep going berserk, everybody pursued and turned into mutants?

8.Henry and Experience, Tucker, the escape, the bites, the truck going over the cliff? Grant as mutant? The sheep pursuing them? Tucker going to the laboratory, the experiments, his head, returning to normal? Experience and Henry being trapped, going down the hole, the tunnel, the special effects, coming out in the laboratory?

9.The sheep, going berserk, the lab deaths?

10.Angus, transformed, falling in love with the sheep – and the sex jokes about sheep from New Zealand? The effect on Angus, his being transformed?

11.Mrs Mac, Tucker, the injection, saved? The pursuit of Angus? The end?

12.Environmental themes, genetic modifications? The serious tone – but the quality of the humour and the treatment?