MOVIES: Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (2026, Steve Cox & Matthew Walker)

The third movie in Aardman Animations' Shaun the Sheep series of movies for small kids. The stories aer set on a farm called Mossy Bottom, where Shaun and the other sheep get into comic tangles involving the Farmer and his dog, Bitzer.

This one begins when the Farmer accidentally destroys the pumpkin patch that Shaun has been growing so that the littlest lamb will have jack-o'-lanterns for Halloween. Shaun goes full-on mad scientist, attempting to create a super growth serum in order to quickly grow at least one pumpkin, but it accidentally winds up in the Farmer's hands.

The Farmer's nervously planning to ask the local vet to the Halloween dance (not knowing that she's just as nervously planning to ask him), but he's insecure about his baldness. Thinking that Shaun's serum is a hair-growth tonic, he rubs it into his scalp, and before long, the Farmer is nowhere to be seen and there's a great hairy beast roaming the streets of the local village. Shaun, Bitzer, and the vet, each with only partial knowledge of what's going on, attempt to solve the crisis and restore order to the farm and village. 

Like the other movies in the series, there is virtually no dialogue, only very expressive grunts and groans, so Natalie Holt's score carries more of the narrative load than usual, and it's a charming bit of work. It helps to set the movie's tone, which is scary enough to be fun for four-year-olds without giving them bad dreams at bedtime.

The movie is, in essence, a sort of Baby's First Horror Movie, and watching the kid-friendly version of classic horror tropes play out gives the adults in the audience something to be amused by. There's a torch-and-pitchfork wielding mob chasing the monster through the countryside, the poor hairy Farmer boxed into a crate to be carried off to remote Bigfoot Island, the Frankenstein-esque lab in which Shaun creates his growth potion and the antidote -- all of them adding just the right tinge of horror to Aardman's usual charming British comedy.

As we've come to expect from Aardman, the stop-motion animation is beautifully done and the jokes are impeccably timed. Unless you are (like me) unusually fond of animation, you probably don't need to see this unless you have a child to watch it with. But if you are an animation geek, or if you do have a preschooler who needs to be entertained, this will make you and the kids happy without any guilt about rotting their brains away with mindless drivel.