Terrified of sheep and dosed up on therapy, Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) returns to his family's farm to sell out to his older brother Angus (Peter Feeney), unaware that something baaaad is going on: Angus' reckless genetic engineering programme. When a pair of inept environmental activists release a mutant lamb from Angus' laboratory onto the farm, thousands of sheep are turned into bloodthirsty predators. Along with farmhand Tucker (Tammy Davis) and greenie girl Experience (Danielle Mason), Henry finds himself stranded deep on the farm as his worst nightmare comes to life.

This might sound familiar to anyone who has had trouble sleeping - you were always advised to start counting sheep. The motifs of these white, fluffy animals were nothing more than sweet, innocent, pure balls of wool aimed at helping you drift off into dreamland.

But casting these meek animals as iconic horror images behind this horror flick was a surprising move on director Jonathan King's part. The animals in the movie are mutant killer creatures that run amok in the vast pastures of the New Zealand landscape!

Sound ridiculously fascinating? That's because it is. King cleverly plays on the comedy aspect by opening the film with establishing shots of the New Zealand pastures before the sudden, gory madness of the sheep start swarming over the hillside, ready to attack everyone and anyone who isn't 'transformed'. But of course, these sheep-killing scenes were only so amazing because of the digital wizards from the Weta Workshop ("Lord Of The Rings" films) who worked on the film's gory scenes. The effects were spot-on with a believable amount of intestines, eaten-off faces, exploding limbs and gushing blood from the docile creatures.

As the film progessed, I wanted to fall in love with the unpretentious and might I say, very original idea of famished ewes on a rampage to massacre people. I actually did but unfortunately, not for long. Once the glory of the gore wore out, the plot seemed to follow as well. The characters were stereotypical parodies, obviously highlighted with a sense of humour. In this aspect, King's satire into his characters (especially on the environmentalists) seemed forced at times. Characters are often funniest when they don't intend to be and it felt like King's screenwriting skills were paving the way for predictable reactions, thus sizzling out the idea of ridiculousness. However, some quirky characterisation does manage to quicken the pace of the film - for example, when a character sees a corpse in the corner and says "The feng shui in this room is terrible".

With a variety of generic, blood-soaked violent movies on the rise, such as South Korea's "The Host", this movie is reminiscent of John Landis' "American Werewolf In London" with an anticipation like that of "Tremors"and goofiness similar to "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes!". However, it does bring back the comedy into a new genre of horror. If you intend to watch it, you will never look at sheep the same way again. I guess in that aspect, "Black Sheep" has triumphed in transforming them into malicious creatures. So, unless you want to start your slumber with nightmares, you might also want to change that old sleeping tip.