Shaun the Sheep is back in the cinema – and this time, instead of the usual blue skies and vivid green pastures, we are transported to Autumn in Mossingham, or more specifically, Halloween.
It’s pumpkin season at Mossy Bottom Farm and Shaun has grown a bumper crop of pumpkins, the sheep are excited about carving a family of pumpkin heads to celebrate the spooky season. However, a series of mishaps results in the pumpkin patch being completely demolished. Upon seeing Timmy’s desolation, Shaun digs out an old Science book and engineers a quick grow formula to regenerate the patch from a single pumpkin seed. The formula works splendidly – but what the sheep didn’t count on is that it would fall into the wrong hands and create a literal monster. The race is on to ensure the monster does not wreak havoc – will Shaun be able to save the day with an antidote?
That’s right, Shaun the Sheep is taking its first foray into scary movies – but The Beast of Mossy Bottom is the gentlest introduction for tiny humans thanks to a liberal dose of the franchise’s signature visual slapstick style. While there are darker shades throughout the movie, these are quickly tempered by gags you can’t help but laugh at. Parents will especially love the nods to classic horror movies – while kids will just see sheep hiding behind the shower curtain, parents will be reminded of Marion Crane.
Equally important in making this a family friendly outing is the movie’s set up. Aardman have repeated the formula of Wallace and Gromit’s “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” and shown audiences the evolution of the villain. Most horror movies build on the fear of the unknown. By removing this, The Beast of Mossy Bottom puts younger audience members in the privileged position of being in the know, while the characters onscreen are the only ones running away, screaming, from the horrible monster.
To be completely honest though, said monster is mostly scary in the dark scenes – in broad daylight, its bundle of ginger fur just makes it look like an ungroomed orange, bipedal, English sheepdog. In fact, when said beast goes through the carwash and emerges all and fluffy, the residents of Mossingham (and some audience members) coo over its unbearable cuteness. The fur conceals what audiences could consider terrifying facial features – no red eyes, no sharp teeth to be seen anywhere. This is a great character design by Aardman – which I’m honestly not surprised by.
I have a deep appreciation for Aardman’s commitment to preserving claymation without the use of computers. It’s a notoriously time-consuming affair – animators working at full speed can churn out almost two seconds of footage a day. From moulding the plasticine into fully formed characters, to repositioning models between snaps for the stop-motion photography, it’s no wonder that Aardman relied on three hundred staff, including thirty animators, to get Shaun the Sheep back on the silver screen.
When you’re working so intensely on a project, it might be tempting to do the bare minimum – but this is certainly not the case in Mossy Bottom. There is so much attention to detail that even the tiniest ones are added, even if it may not necessarily catch the audience’s eye. One minute detail I did catch was how when the sheep wear gloves, their hooves only fill the palms, leaving the fingers hollow. As their hooves move, you see the material of the gloves flop around where the fingers should be.
But the richness of detail is not just limited to the characters. Rather than relying on narrative tropes, Aardman adds details that audiences wouldn’t normally expect. In one scene, Bitzer smells a piece of clothing to find The Farmer. In a regular movie, you would just expect a scene where the dog just runs down a trail, looking for their owner. In Mossy Bottom, the stink lines form a “stink apparition” of The Farmer, who guides Bitzer to his location. Audiences would not have missed the stink apparition, but the inclusion of it gives great visual texture to the scene and provides another avenue for comedy.
This commitment to meticulousness and the desire to do more than “just enough” probably explains why Aardman is celebrating fifty years in the business, one that is decorated with a bevy of awards, including four Oscars and eighteen BAFTAs.
The Beast of Mossy Bottom is certainly winning accolades in our household – as someone who has not watched a full episode of Shaun the Sheep before, I’m now digging through our streaming platforms in search of previous movies and episodes. All for my son, of course.
Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom opens just in time for the September school holidays.