Saturday, March 22, 2008

This reviewer's cap is really comfortable- Black Sheep: too much gore, or exactly the right amount of AWESOME GORE?

So my pal N and I decided we wanted to have a crappy movie night. This was to commemorate the time we watched The Brothers Grimm starring Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger. We skipped over like 45 minutes, and it didn't even matter. That movie was HORRIBLE and about three times longer than it needed to be. Anyway, we'd both heard of Black Sheep and decided pretty much immediately that it would be a fine choice for distracting us and drowning our sorrows in (also a DELICIOUS bottle of Hey Mambo sultry red). Especially after having so recently enjoyed the disgusting-ness of Teeth, the gratuitous blood and guts in this movie were very pleasing. I will now list some reasons I liked it so much, since lists are easy and take less effort than actual paragraphs: 1. KILLER SHEEP. OMG best idea ever. I'm not big on animals myself, and have always been wary of big ones like sheep, that are supposedly harmless but could probably really do some damage if they wanted to. And I love that the main character has a sheep phobia from childhood. The puppetry and effects were awesome. 2. GENETIC ENGINEERING CAUTIONARY TALE. It's kind of like watching a ridiculous New Zealand X-Files episode, what with the "science is dangerous in the wrong hands" lessons. Don't fuck around with sheep DNA, boys and girls, you will be EATEN and/or turned into a were-sheep. 3. TONS OF FUCKING SWEET FAKE BLOOD AND ENTRAILS. I was just telling a friend of mine that my favorite shots were the ones where the sheep would bite into somebody, and their insides would come stretching out like a long piece of pizza cheese. 4. NATHAN MEISTER. He's cute. 5. THE TONE. Like Teeth, Black Sheep kind of moved back and forth between being actually a little bit suspenseful and scary, incredible amounts of gore, and really fucking funny moments. Later I realized the whole semi-spoofy/semi-homage-y nature of this type of horror film reminds me a lot of Shaun of the Dead. It's not quite as well done, but you can't knock the premise--or the New Zealand accents. Anyway, definitely worth renting or seeing at a midnight showing-type event. It's always fun to cringe and gag with a large, cheerful crowd of people.

4 comments:

  1. This came to seattle last year at this big film festival and naturally we wanted to see it. we waited for like 45 minutes in the cold to get a ticket to the midnight showing and then ended up being literally the first people in line who got cut off. so i never saw it :(

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  2. Well, I actually had heard of it because I saw it in the film festival listings when I was in Seattle last year. Unfortunately, it wasn't playing while I was in town, and instead we saw that terrible French horror film that ended up being about sadistic 11 year-olds. Fuck that shit.

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  3. The violence of the lambs.

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  4. oh my god, i totally forgot that a) you were in seattle during SIFF and b) we watched that horrible, awful, terrible movie about creepy creepy murderer-children. Thanks for the reminder about that

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