Have you ever seen a movie so bad, you had to recommend it to your friends? A movie so bad you liked it because of how fun it was to watch and make fun of? Black Sheep wants very badly to be one of those movies. It falls short for me however, because it also tries to be an actual horror movie at the same time, lacking the satirical edge a film trying to mock how awful it is needs. This makes the film rather monotonous, and you find yourself rooting for the sheep to just kill everyone already, just so it will all end and you can get on with your life. We start out on a lovely New Zealand farm, spread out on a lovely country side, with a lovely dog, and a lovely pair of siblings, all frolicking happily together. When the younger boy Henry goes to the house, the older brother axe murders the boy’s pet sheep. Then wearing the sheep’s carcass, he hides in the barn to scare his younger brother. While Henry is on the ground screaming in terror, the grandmother comes out and tells them to stop playing around, that there has been an accident, and their father has been killed. We suddenly jump years in the future, and meet the adult Henry who now has a pathological fear of sheep. Already knowing the title of the film, of course we the viewers know this is going to serve him well. The first thing I notice, and cannot stop noticing during the entire film, is the horrendous audio track. It’s not that the audio is bad, it’s that it is too good. It is painfully clear that every line of audio was recorded in the studio after the fact and over-layed onto the film, leaving everything feeling out of sync despite the words they are saying being in line with their mouths. Cast Nathan Meister as Henry Oldfield Peter Feeney as Angus Oldfield Danielle Mason as Experience Oliver Driver as Grant Tammy Davis as Tucker Written and Directed By Jonathan King The movie goes on to use all the classic techniques of ridiculous horror movies, but it can never make up its mind about what it wants to be. I was never able to decide whether or not the director, Peter King, was trying to make an actual horror film, or if he was trying to parody one. It is clear horror movies are being made fun of, but the movie never goes into full parody mode. The danger from these sheep are real, and it goes deeper than just being killed. No it is more like a zombie plague, where if you get bitten you transform. That’s right, weresheep or sheeple are another real danger to anyone in the area. It’s so bad it is comedic, and there is some definite comedy, but there is no real satirical feeling to what is going on. It’s a complete contradiction that prevented me from ever really getting into the movie. The elder brother who has taken over the farm after the demise of the father, is trying to move into the future with new methods of agricultural science. He does this of course, by bringing in what appears to be a hot, youn ...

1. Have you ever seen a movie so bad, you had to
recommend it to your friends? A movie so bad you liked it
because of how fun it was to watch and make fun of? Black
Sheep wants very badly to be one of those movies. It falls short
for me however, because it also tries to be an actual horror
movie at the same time, lacking the satirical edge a film trying
to mock how awful it is needs. This makes the film rather
monotonous, and you find yourself rooting for the sheep to just
kill everyone already, just so it will all end and you can get on
with your life.
We start out on a lovely New Zealand farm, spread out on a
lovely country side, with a lovely dog, and a lovely pair of
siblings, all frolicking happily together. When the younger boy
Henry goes to the house, the older brother axe murders the
boy’s pet sheep. Then wearing the sheep’s carcass, he hides in
the barn to scare his younger brother. While Henry is on the
ground screaming in terror, the grandmother comes out and
tells them to stop playing around, that there has been an
accident, and their father has been killed. We suddenly jump
years in the future, and meet the adult Henry who now has a
pathological fear of sheep. Already knowing the title of the
film, of course we the viewers know this is going to serve him
well. The first thing I notice, and cannot stop noticing during
the entire film, is the horrendous audio
track. It’s not that the audio is bad, it’s that it is too good. It is
painfully clear that every line of audio
was recorded in the studio after the fact and over-layed onto the
film, leaving everything feeling out of
sync despite the words they are saying being in line with their

2. mouths.
Cast
Nathan Meister as Henry Oldfield
Peter Feeney as Angus Oldfield
Danielle Mason as Experience
Oliver Driver as Grant
Tammy Davis as Tucker
Written and Directed By
Jonathan King
The movie goes on to use all the classic techniques of ridiculous
horror movies, but it can never
make up its mind about what it wants to be. I was never able to
decide whether or not the director,
Peter King, was trying to make an actual horror film, or if he
was trying to parody one. It is clear
horror movies are being made fun of, but the movie never goes
into full parody mode. The danger
from these sheep are real, and it goes deeper than just being
killed. No it is more like a zombie
plague, where if you get bitten you transform. That’s right,
weresheep or sheeple are another real
danger to anyone in the area. It’s so bad it is comedic, and
there is some definite comedy, but there is
no real satirical feeling to what is going on. It’s a complete
contradiction that prevented me from ever
really getting into the movie.
The elder brother who has taken over the farm after the demise
of the father, is trying to move
into the future with new methods of agricultural science. He

3. does this of course, by bringing in what
appears to be a hot, young, female, German mad scientist who
begins splicing human DNA into the
sheep. It is never explained what kind of sheep they are trying
to make, or what benefits this is
supposed to have. The whole plague begins not because of the
scientist, but because of a few activists
who are breaking in to “save the sheep” and bring about
awareness for animal cruelty. They are ridiculously clownish,
especially the male. They are sneaking around and taking
pictures clearly trying not to be seen, when the guy jumps over
the fence in full view of everyone, and is running full tilt down
the hill towards the scientists. He is quite literally waving his
arms around in the air and running wildly, then picks up a
cooler from the back of the truck, opens it, takes out a huge
specimen jar, slams the cooler lid down, and runs away yelling
HAHAHAHA before he is even noticed at all. A chase begins,
and at one point the young man and his beautiful young
woman companion named Experience are hiding under the
brush. She is quietly chastising him for being a moron, all
while the scientists are wandering around searching for them.
The pair are being very quiet until this guy holding the huge
specimen jar decides to make a break for it. What does he do?
He screams as loud as he can “GO!” before darting out, drawing
maximum attention to himself. He trips, breaks the jar, and
the baby lamb that was floating in the viscous fluid crawls up
his back and chomps down on his ear. He stands up,
screaming and flailing about, making him the first of many
victims. The local sheep also become infected, causing
massive flocks of hundreds of sheep to go insane and flesh
hungry, turning anyone they bite into
weresheep. It is discovered however, that the cure for the
plague is a direct injection of the amniotic
fluid found in jars containing the different sheep specimens
found through the lab. Makes perfect
sense!

4. The biggest eye roll inducing behavior in the movie is the
helplessness from anyone in
danger that you would normally find in infomercials. You know
the ones, where men and women are
simply unable to operate the complex and intricate mechanisms
involved in opening a jug of milk, or
getting a slice of bread out of the bag. At one point our hero
Henry was on the ground with our
moronic activist-turned-weresheep on top of him trying to kill
him. Now these weresheep are huge,
like eight feet tall and beefy and muscular, so easily 300 pounds
or more. However this poor
weresheep was unable to penetrate the ultimate defense of
Henry’s single forearm block, not even
Do these earrings make me look fat?
able to scratch him in the slightest while they struggle for
minutes on end while the old grandmother
is trying to load her shotgun. It would be more enjoyable if the
film was actually trying harder to
parody these things, but it just isn’t clear if that is the case.
I was truly ready for this experience to end when Henry needed
to get through a large flock of
maddened, killer sheep. He wraps himself in the faux sheep
skin seat cover from his grand-mothers
old car, and crawls on the ground through the flock repeating to
himself “I am a sheep, I am a sheep”.
The only thing missing in this scene
was for him to be mounted by a
male sheep and humped. Oh wait,

5. that happened.
Between the too perfect audio
track and the inability of the
director to decide the genre he
wanted to explore, I found this film
painful to watch and extremely
difficult to finish. The only saving
grace for me was the actual visuals,
which were surprisingly well done
for such a low budget movie. I was
surprised to find that WETA Digital was involved in the visuals
of the film. If you haven’t heard of
them, they are the studio who did the visuals and graphic
animations for movies like The Hobbit
Trilogy, Iron Man 3, The Hunger Games, The Wolverine,
Avatar, Man of Steel, and the list goes on.
This is not a minor studio, and their high standards of quality
are seen in this movie as well. This
entire movie was a mixed blending of contractions. High
quality visuals and well composed music,
bad vocal track, comedy writing, and a forced attempt at actual
horror. If you enjoy watching movies
you only recommend for how bad they are, I suppose Black
Sheep could be right up your alley.
Maximum eye-roll rating was not achieved due to the
contradictory nature of the genre.
Citations:
Black Sheep. Dir. Jonathan King. Perf. Nathan Meister, Peter
Feeney, Danielle Mason. Genius
Products, 2007. DVD

6. Black Sheep. Movie Poster. 2007. Web. 13Oct,2015.
“Black Sheep Ear Bite Scene”. Genius Products, 2015.
Author’s Screenshot.
“Black Sheep Crawling Scene”. Genius Products, 2015.
Author’s Screenshot.
"Bloody Sheep." By Yankz on DeviantArt. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.
I am a sheep, I am a sheep
Film Critique Essay Assignment
Length: 1000 words, minimum Due: 11:59 pm, 3/15/16
sum·ma·ry ˈsəmərē/
noun
a brief statement or account of the main points of something.
a·nal·y·sis əˈnaləsəs/
noun
detailed examination of the elements or structure of something,
typically as a basis for discussion or interpretation.
Summaryandanalysisare two of the most important skills in a
writer’s toolbox, and the writer’s ability to blend both of those
skills together in a way that is both meaningful and impactful
for their reader is absolutely essential. For your second formal
assignment, you will be utilizing summary and analysis to craft
a film critique.
Begin by choosing a film. You may choose a recent release or a
classic, a film you have seen a hundred times or one you have
never seen at all. You should view this film once, paying close
attention to the details of the film. Then watch the film a second

7. time, taking notes on special points of interest as well as your
own personal questions and reactions.
You may be tempted at first to simply write a reviewof the film.
A critique, however, is somewhat different from a review. A
movie review simply documents the critical reception of a film
at its time of theatrical or DVD release. It is more consumer-
oriented, placing emphasis on recommendation than analysis. A
critique is an analytical essay on a film, in which you give your
opinion on the aesthetic or ethical quality of the film and then
give your reasons for your opinion. Criticism usually offers
interpretations a film’s meaning, analysis of its structure and
style, judgement of its worth by comparison with other films,
and an estimation of its likely effect on viewers.
Keeping this in mind, do not limit yourself to reacting to the
film (“I loved it!” or “I hate it!”) and do not use generic terms
like “incredible,” “wonderful,” “marvelous,” etc. Unlike a
review, you assume that the reader has already seen the movie;
you do not need to give an extensive plot summary; you do not
need to hide plot information so as not to spoil the surprise of
the viewer; and you do need to be consistently analytical and
critical. Remember: the purpose of a film critique is to offer
your critical opinion and support that opinion with analysis.
Requirements:
· 1000 words minimum
· NOT MLA FORMAT – This is your one chance this semester
to be creative with your formatting. Try to make your critique
look like the models we are examining in class.
· Include at least one relevant image from your film
· A rating system of some kind. You’ll have a chance in class to
come up with your own rating system. You may choose to go
the hilarious route or the serious route.
· Observation of grammatical and mechanical rules