Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
Directors – Steve Cox, Matthew Walker – 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 80m
*****
When the sheep’s pumpkin patch is damaged, Shaun invents a regenerative potion, which the farmer later uses as hair restorer by mistake… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th
As Halloween approaches iin Mossy Bottom, the farmer (non-verbal voice: John Sparkes) would like nothing more than to invite the lady vet (non-verbal voice: Nina Sosanya) to the Halloween Hoedown, for which his two tickets have just arrived in the post. When she turns up to give injections to the sheep, who are hiding ineffectively in the barn, he keeps getting prevented from asking her by being draged around the farm by Bitzer his dog (non-verbal voice: also John Sparkes). It later turns out she too has two tickets and plans to invite him, but is similarly prevented by various incidents.
Meanwhile, unearthly apparitions – mysterious eyes appearing on a signpost – are revealed as Shaun (non-verbal voice: Justin Fletcher) and fellow sheep having put up a false background of the rural view behind the sign, to keep the farmer’s prying eyes away from their prized, secret Halloween pumpkin patch. However, whilst being dragged around the farm by Bitzer, the farmer crashes through the sheep’s concealed background to collide with and crush their crop, leaving the sheep bereft of pumpkins for Halloween.
In search of a way to make good the situation, at least as far as he and his fellow sheep are concerned, Shaun consults his book of science and, inspired by his discovery of the farmer’s recently discarded, empty bottle of hair restorer, creates in his lab at the spooky-looking windmill straight out of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) a formula to rapidly grow pumpkins from a retrieved seed recalling the similar bottle from King-Size Canary (Tex Avery, short, 1947). Alas, the farmer discovers the newly jettisoned, repurposed bottle and uses its contents to restore his hair, which rapidly starts to grow all over until his entire body is covered with it, making him unrecognisable. A beast.
Now the farmer’s inviting the vet to the Hoedown will be even more difficult. And a rampaging mob of locals seeking the Beast is scarcely likely to help…
The above synopsis, which doesn’t get into the complex hijinks which ensue from this set up, gives the framework on which numerous, rapid fire sight gags are hung. For example, when the vet arrives to inject the sheep, she finds an apparently empty barn, but her opening of hayloft trap doors causes the flock to fall out onto the floor below.
Some of the gags are very much in passing. At one point during the mayhem, a startled delivery driver accidentally drops a fragile package labelled as containing glass on the intended recipient’s doorstep, then photographs it on his phone as proof of delivery.
This is a film which never misses a visual cue. Although not a horror film, it completely understands the language of the classic Frankenstein movies and has a lot of fun playing around with that within the wider context of the idealised, everyday English farm and country life for which the Shaun the Sheep franchise is known. There is nothing here to upset little ones, and plenty of character and humour to delight and cause fits of laughter among both children and adults. While I enjoyed the previous two Shaun the Sheep movies, I don’t remember either of them them being as good as this.
The gags come thick and fast, the timing is spot on. The whole thing is flawlessly conceived and judged, as good as anything Aardman has ever done, which is high praise indeed. I haven’t mentioned stop-frame animation, because the piece works perfectly as a movie, from which most live action directors could learn a great deal. And, at risk of stating the obvious, it’s very, very funny – comedy being arguably the hardest thing to successfully pull off in movies, period. All this, and at only 80 minutes long, an absolutely hilarious and unmissable treat. The perfect reason for a trip to the cinema, in fact.
Additional non-verbal voices: Paul Whitehouse, Kate Harbour, Dani Dyer, Roman Kemp.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 18th.
Trailer:
Trailer 2: