by Amanda Webster
Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Paul Whitehouse, Nina Sosanya, Dani Dyer
Intro:
A wildly fun, family friendly adventure that’s perfect for the school holidays and the spooky season ahead.
The latest instalment in Aardman’s stop‑motion Shaun the Sheep series, The Beast of Mossy Bottom, arrives in cinemas just in time for the school holidays. It’s a genuinely funny horror-comedy Halloween special, timed for the upcoming spooky season.
On the eve of Halloween, the sheep of Mossy Bottom Farm prepare their secret pumpkin patch for baby Timmy’s long‑awaited jack‑o’-lantern harvest. But disaster strikes when a mischievous goat and the clumsy Farmer become entangled, the goat dragging him through the patch and destroying it entirely.
Heartbroken, Timmy salvages a single seed, and Shaun, ever the inventive troublemaker, and inspired by a book he finds on ‘homemade science’, decides to save the day. Shaun cooks up a Frankenstein-style potion in his barn laboratory to regenerate the pumpkins overnight. But thanks to Bitzer’s well‑meaning interference, the potion ends up in the Farmer’s hands. Mistaking it for hair‑restoration tonic, he slathers it on in hopes of restoring his luscious locks and impressing his crush, the village vet, before asking her to the Halloween Hoe‑Down. It works a little too well. The farmer’s hair, and the pumpkins, grow wildly out of control, transforming him into the shaggy, Bigfoot‑like Beast of Mossy Bottom.
Terrified villagers drive the creature into hiding, while Bitzer valiantly tries to protect the farm from both the “monster” and the mob and sets out to track down his master. With the kindly vet stepping in to save the beast from the hunt and Shaun racing to concoct an antidote, the sheep rally for one last heroic effort to bring their friend home.
Another imaginative and wittily crafted collaboration between screenwriters Mark Burton and Giles Pilbrow, The Beast of Mossy Bottom is packed with amusing visual gags and cheeky film nods, from the Psycho shower scene and ‘Thriller’‑style choreography to nods at The Simpsons and classic Frankenstein.
In a world where content is generated in an instant by AI, it’s a delight to watch a film crafted over years, each frame created and painstakingly moulded by the human hand. If you’re after genuine giggles, this wholesome family adventure is a must-see.
