Black Sheep (2007)

My good friend Al recommended this knowing I was a big fan of splatter-era Peter Jackson, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it did more than live up to expectations. I was really struck by simply how good the movie LOOKED. It was shot on 35mmm, had some really great photography of the New Zealand coastline, farmlands, etc, and overall was really slick. The director, Jonathan King, apparently wrote the script for The Tattooist, which I'm interested in checking out, even though it doesn't look very fun like Black Sheep was.

But on top of all that stuff, it kicked ass. There was quite a bit of gore, though nothing compared to Jackson's early stuff, and most of the gruesome moments came from people mutating into giant sheep, one limb at a time. There was one moment however that made me wince hard, and that was the offal pit, filled with rotting pig guts, and of course into which the characters fall and have to wade through to get back to safety. That reminded me of the scene in Phenomena when Jennifer Connelly falls into the pool of corpses, and I shuddered big time during that.

There was such a playful tone in the "sheep attack" scenes, which were essentially close-ups of handpuppets (kind of like Lamb Chop's demented cousins or something) chomping away at someone screaming, and then cut to a wide shot of common sheep standing in a field, casually gnawing at fake human limbs, heads, etc...and nothing beats menacing violins screeching underneath a bunch of sheep heading over a hill in our direction. Also, besides "Get the flock outta here!", another tagline was "Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs."