On a New Zealand farm, genetically modified sheep become baa-baric! In an idea whose time has well and truly come – why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? – Jonathan King makes a Peter Jackson styled splash on the New Zealand film industry. It’s bold, brash, extremely silly and, for most of its compact runtime, good fun.

With an eye on the future, Angus (Peter Feeney) has built a lab on the family sheep farm. White-coats have been tinkering with DNA and, naturally, it all goes horribly wrong when a vial of genetic material is snatched. Marked for disposal, it contains a mutant lamb with murderous intent. One nip later and an animal activist is well on the way to becoming a were-sheep - the rest of the flock just turn nasty. Carnivorously so.

To offer some narrative structure, King plays his story against a minor chord of sibling rivalry. Angus is buying out his brother Henry (Nathan Meister) who fled the farm for city life. With good reason - he has an unmanageable phobia that sheep will, one day, do exactly what they end up doing here. Forced to confront his fear, fearsome creatures and a frightening brother, Black Sheep quickly becomes a vehicle for gags and gag-inducing gore.

There’s not much more to say about a film that plays its hand so openly. Loaded with the requisite score of jumps and scares, one-liners, dead-pan humour, megalitres of fake blood and entrails enthusiastically supplied by Jackson’s Weta Digital, Black Sheep ticks the boxes in rapid succession. It’s no Shaun of the Dead, it’s not clever enough for that. This is Brain Dead for a new generation and a calling card for King. At both levels, it succeeds admirably.

// COLIN FRASER