Many are familiar with the works of British animation company Aardman, Shaun the Sheep one of their popular creations. And this year, he’s bringing spooky fun to the cinema, just in time for Halloween.
Shaun the Sheep has been a continuation of a media empire that began with a supporting role in the 1995 Academy Award winning Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave and has since spawned films, TV shows, spin-offs (younger ones might remember Timmy Time, following the young lamb’s adventures in preschool), and a very lucrative line of merchandise. Where the first film was the franchise’s emotional take on Babe: Pig In The City, and the second, 2019’s Farmageddon, a cute alien-invasion sci-fi pastiche, The Beast of Mossy Bottom is a love letter to the classic horror films.
Set at Mossy Bottom farm, Shaun, young lamb Timmy (both voiced by Justin Fletcher) and his loyal flock are Halloween-obsessed and desperate to make Jack O’Lanterns worthy of the season. Aware that the Farmer is in general a liability, the flock has grown a secret pumpkin patch that they’ve carefully nurtured and grown to perfection, nestled away from the Farmer’s eyes and extremely clumsy feet. However, the Farmer does exactly that, prompting Shaun to unleash his inner Victor Frankenstein and concoct a chemical to grow the pumpkins to full size.
In a B-plot, the Farmer (John Sparkes) is in love with the Mossingham town vet (Nina Sosanya), and plans to ask her out to the yearly Halloween Hoedown. However, the Farmer’s insecurities about his receding hairline overpower his feelings. Desperate, he uses Shaun’s chemical to help him out, only to lead to hairy results. Upon terrorising the town, it’s up to Shaun, the sheepdog Bitzer (also voiced by John Sparkes) and the rest of the flock to fix their mistakes and save Halloween.
The strength of Mark Burton and Giles Pilbrow’s screenplay, and most Shaun and Aardman features for that matter, is that each film’s increasingly dire situations don’t come from overcomplicated plots; rather, they derive from the escalation of the characters’ actions and the domino effect, which makes for simple narratives. First-time feature directors Steve Cox and Matthew Walker have loaded the film with horror gags that transcend generations, such as The Wolf Man, Dracula, Psycho, Jaws, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and even a Game of Thrones reference (“Hodor!”). This creates a film younger viewers can easily follow while still appealing to older viewers with its classic movie underpinnings for the Halloween season.
It’s also appreciated that the directors have expanded the farm to extend into the unsettling woods of Mossingham, added that set piece-worthy windmill, folded in the expanded Mossingham citizenry, and included a whole sea-set action sequence.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is a great addition to the Aardman farm trilogy and to their larger production history. It’s a cross between a love letter to stop-motion and to the horror genre as a whole. While not as strong as the first Shaun the Sheep film, The Beast of Mossy Bottom is great Halloween movie to watch with the family.
