This Saturday we were graced by the lovely Liz and her charming Frank. We provided the pizza (pi for pie day. Sicilian, of course, because pi are square. I’ll keep saying that until its funny.) and they provided the love, in the form of Black Sheep.

After seeing a trailer for it in front another Netflix rental, they immediately thought of us (gross out horror comedy, check! New Zealand, where Aly and I honeymooned, doublecheck!), and that’s why I love Liz. We sat Julia in the other room with pizza and Horton (she had just gotten a plastic lamb at the Elmwood Park zoo that afternoon, and that, plus guts, would have been too much — Responsible Dad!) and watched the hell out of that sucker. I was immediately taken back back 10 years to Liz and Aly’s apartment, watching horrible, horrible movies and being asked never, ever to go out and choose a movie on my own again.

But Black Sheep is everything I wished those other horror movies were. I give it: ♥ ♥ ♥ ∞, which I think means its good. It’s tough to say on this scale.

It was a fun film and you can see early Peter Jackson all over it, which isn’t a surprise considering that it takes place in New Zealand (I once described parts of the North Island as “rolling green hills covered in little white dots”) and because Weta Workshop did the effects (there was one scene where I swear they just replaced orcs with sheep). In fact, the first mutant lamb reminded me of the Sumatran rat monkey of Jackson’s Dead Alive (or Braindead, depending on what market you’re in, I guess).

I consider this movie an exemplar of the genre. Not as funny as, say, Shaun of the Dead, but a lot more disturbing. Fast-paced and scary in its own right, true to its own internal logic and funny without being slapstick-silly at every turn. It was well thought out and nicely put together, despite the low budget, full of nice, light touches and the rare treat of character development. In fact, I found the dialogue, in particular, to be smartly written. It is also a very bloody film, in the most meaty, visceral sense of the term.

As I said, you can see Weta Workshop’s hands all over this film. The special effects were great, especially the were-sheep and other sheepish monsters, but they weren’t above adding a few catapult-launched sheep for cheap, tension-cutting laughs. (Especially one flying lamb followed by a well-executed Wilhelm scream.)

It was also a beautiful movie, full of well-framed shots of the green, rich New Zealand countryside. (As I said, it was a very New Zealand movie — I also took smug delight in being able to explain what Aotearoa meant.) The attention the filmmakers paid to the landscape — not that I really know anything about cinematography — allowed the flick to move beyond the typical standards of the genre to something that was really quite well-crafted and watchable. I don’t know much about the director, Jonathan King, other than this is his first film, but I look forward to seeing his next one.

So, all and all, a proper pizza-and-beer flick, although you might want to hold the sausage.