All Slights Deserved

Just a short review here... I guess if any country was going to produce a horror comedy about genetically engineered vampire sheep then it was going to be New Zealand. What's more surprising is that it's actually not at all bad. Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister) returns to his family's farm fifteen years after the tragedy that left his father and Henry with a pathological fear of sheep. In the intervening period his ruthless older brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has expanded the estate and, with the assistance of some scientists in his employ, has been conducting some dodgy experiments with his livestock. Henry is all set to sell his share of the farm to Angus and return to his comfortable city life, but when animal rights activists release a mutant vampire lamb they set in motion a train of events that will make Henry's darkest nightmares terrifyingly real. The results are some predictably gory, gruesome and anarchic fun. Given the budget presumably didn't exceed...

When we watch a film we enter into an unwritten contract that we're willing to be manipulated. Be it sympathy, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, lust or any combination of these; if the film-maker is skillful they'll succeed in delivering at least some of us to that emotional state. We accept that their intentions are more or less benign and go along for the ride. That manipulation doesn't always sit quite so comfortably afterwards, when reason resumes control. Traditionally the works which are singled out for criticism or censorship are those more extreme films which, according to our moral guardians, have the tendency to 'deprave and corrupt'. But there's another kind of film that can be equally ruthless; those which seek to speak to our inner child and the unresolved issues we never quite put aside. Where is this coming from? Well, because at the end of Niki Caro's Whale Rider I cried, which - being a jaded cynic - isn't a common occurrence. ...