Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is in theaters on September 18.
In this 50th year celebrating Aardman Animations, most think of the ongoing adventures of Wallace & Gromit. But the more humble MVP of the stop-motion studio continues to be Shaun the Sheep, first introduced in the 1995 Academy Award-winning short, A Close Shave. He and his Mossy Bottom Farms flock have since starred in multiple series, shorts, and a trilogy of feature films. The third installment of that trilogy, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, is a love letter to the Universal Monsters era of filmmaking that’s a delightful homage to silent era visual comedy.
In keeping with 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie and 2019’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, The Beast of Mossy Bottom continues to keep its world and characters basic and easy to follow. This Halloween-centric story opens at Mossy Bottom farm, which is run by the clueless Farmer and his more competent sheepdog with an exaggerated overbite, Bitzer (both vocalized by comedian John Sparkes). Left to play in the fields is his flock, led by the super-creative and adventurous Shaun (Justin Fletcher). 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 for their Halloween Hoedown, nestled away from the Farmer’s eyes and extremely clumsy feet.
The Farmer, of course, still finds a way to ruin the patch, which spurs a despondent Shaun to come up with a fix so little Timmy and their flock can have their party. Finding a handmade science book in the barn, Shaun devolves into a mini-Frankenstein — including experimenting in his windmill lab — to create a serum he’ll put on their pumpkin seeds so they’ll grow back in time for Halloween. And boy do they, uncontrollably so, which puts Shaun on the back hoof fixing his fix.
In the film’s intertwined “B” plot, the Farmer has a secret crush on the local Vet (Nina Sosanya), but he’s feeling embarrassed by the retreating creep of his hairline. He also seeks a quick remedy when he stumbles upon a bottle of old hair growth (newly filled with the excess of Shaun’s serum), and decides to use it to get confident enough to ask the lady doc out. You can imagine the hairy mess that ensues.
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. Here, that translates into a movie younger viewers can easily follow while still appealing to older viewers with its classic movie underpinnings for the Halloween season. Plus, the writers and animators have ambitiously filled every frame with horror cinema visual easter eggs, endless sight gags, and great character performances. The Beast of Mossy Bottom is almost dialogue-free, but it all works because first-time feature directors Steve Cox and Matthew Walker have kept the core narrative clear and loaded the film with generational gags that cleverly reference today’s horrors as well as bits from James Whale’s Frankenstein and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
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. That level of scale for The Beast of Mossy Bottom keeps the pokey farm from feeling too small for a cinematic story, and continues to push the limits of the stop-motion wizardry of the Aardman Animations team. Speaking of which, the animators have outdone themselves by including massive amounts of moving hair to their animation repertoire as the Farmer goes full Sasquatch; they also weave in spritzing water and aquatic critters. It’s easy to forget, and take for granted, that every single character and locale is handmade and individually manipulated by animators, making this another stunning achievement and demonstration of the studio’s patience and craftsmanship.
Special kudos also go to Natalie Holt’s score, which does a tremendous amount of emotional heavy lifting in what is essentially a silent film. She and her orchestra land jokes with their flourishes à la Carl Stalling’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies compositions, or wholesale create emotional moments that they mine with notes in between the character grunts or gibberish talk.
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 clearly made by a team of silent-era horror cinema nerds and some of the quickest punsters in the business. It’s heartening to see the studio’s continuing commitment to the stop-motion technique while honoring what’s come before in the horror genre. Though it may not be as slick or elevated as Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, The Beast of Mossy Bottom deserves a theatrical watch and to become a future Halloween classic.
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