(courtesy IMP Awards)
In a bid to sell this movie to my full-on horror loving friend – turns out I didn’t have to sell it too hard; who doesn’t love some Aardman whimsy as it turns out – I told him it was Halloween-adjacent, embracing the season quite clearly but not a full-on resident of a part of the year where dark things crawl out of the woodwork and have a festively creepy party.
As it turns out to my great delight, and his too as it turns out, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is as into horror as a lot of other people and much of its appeal comes from the flawlessly clever and endlessly hilarious way it folds all of its horror influences into a gorgeously funny and whimsically scary story.
Okay, to be honest it’s not scary at all, but then, it’s not really meant to be.
We know from the get-go who the beast really is meaning that while the townsfolk of Mossingham who display an all-too-typical love of mindless violence and “torches and pitchforks” mob action (with the sort of implements that you’d expect an Aardman crowd to embrace), are terrified out of their intensely parochial brains, the rest of us are well and truly in on the joke.
The horror Easter Eggs kick in right at the start of Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom.
We see Shaun (voiced by Justin Fletcher) and the flock waking up, and it’s all zombies and Psycho sound effects and a host of other comedically rich visual influences that we won’t spoil by revealing them here, as they rouse from slumber, along with The Farmer and Bitzer the dog (both voiced by John Sparkes) and the rest of the denizens of the farm at Mossy Bottom.
While Shaun and Timmy (Justin Fletcher again), Timmy’s mother (Kate Harbour) are looking forward to decorating for and celebrating Halloween in their cosy barn, The Farmer is excited about asking out The Vet (Nina Sosanya) to a Halloween dance where he plans to relive the glory days of sparkly, sequin-studded cowboy outfit-wearing youth.
While The Vet isn’t loved by the animals – one of the best visual sequences in a movie truly rich with them is watching how they avoid her; it’s slapstick perfection as it the way she thwarts them – The Farmer Adores her, a gush-worthy sentiment which is returned by her.
Clearly, love is in the air but The Farmer doesn’t know it’s mutual yet, caught in that scary period between romantic hope and actuality, and he’s convinced that he needs to reverse his current rampant male pattern baldness to truly win her heart.
The solution is a bottle of Hair Grow formula, which alas is empty; well, that is until Shaun decides to play mad scientist, and again it’s a joy to watch how Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom pays gloriously funny and yet whimsically sweet homage to a host of horror influences including the Universal Monster and Hammer Horror movies, and fills the once-empty bottle with a growth formula which is meant to simply quickly grow Timmy’s wrecked pumpkins in time for Halloween but it ends making a monster out of The Farmer.
Well, an inadvertent one, anyway, because The Farmer, initially thrilled at how lustrous locks have become again, is inside the hairy beast of Mossy Bottom and all he needs is someone to see that.
That someone, or someones really, becomes Shaun, the flock, Bitzer and The Vet, who after they get over their initial fear of what the beast is – fight or flight is very strong with this group and Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom has a lot of fun playing with what naked, unthinking fear will do to a person, end up racing to save The Farmer from a mess that is not really of his making.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is really, for all its skillfully employed horror influences, a whimsical sweet and funny, deeply heartfelt story of what a family will do to look after one of its own.
And make no mistake – the disparate souls of Mossy Bottom Farm are a classical found family who may not always see eye-to-eye, since where would the characters be without some argy-bargy and angst, but who are there for each other when it really counts.
While Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom may not, in typical Aardman fashion, have a lot of dialogue, it does a beautiful job of using visual gags to drive the story along, a story which gives us a Jurassic Park meets King Kong climax that is hilarious to watch for sure, but also really touching because of how hard they are prepared to work for someone they care about and who’s in a mess they have caused.
It’s tricky being hilariously whimsical and affectingly heartfelt in the one movie but Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom manages it with wonderfully comic aplomb, serving up a film which runs to just the right length (a tight but well-used 81 minutes) which it fills with the kind of comic eccentricity we have to love from characters who push the envelope almost every time to mildly disastrous degrees but who always do what it takes to set it right.
Moral compasses are in perfect alignment in the film and while the Beast aka The Farmer causes all kind of havoc and mayhem, all of it completely inadvertently, and Shaun and the gang have their hands full fixing a mess of our titular protagonist’s making, the overriding sense is of a love letter to Halloween, to the fun of the season and to the way family pulls together when the apple cart is upset by accident and misguided good intentions.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom isn hilarious, comically rich joy which will make you laugh, make you sigh with the joy of inclusive family and some whimsy and fun to a season which can be scary sure, but which in the hands of the masters of Aardman, becomes a heartwarming, comic delight too.
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