Black Sheep

Colour, 35 mm
New Zealand, 2006, 87 min
Section: Midnight Screenings

Synopsis

A tragedy on the family farm leaves Henry with a fear of sheep. After spending years in the city, he returns to the scene of the event to get his cynical brother Angus to pay him his share of the farm. The latter is getting ready to present his revolutionary project to investors: genetically modified super-sheep. What he doesn’t know is that the experiment went wrong, and the surrounding plains are crawling with hundreds of bloodthirsty mutants who can turn a man into a were-sheep with a single bite. To save his skin Henry must join forces with a stout farmhand, an environmental activist, and an old housekeeper... Jonathan King’s debut was inspired by the low-budget horrors The Evil Dead (1981) and Bad Taste (1987). In making the film, he collaborated with a thousand sheep extras, several trained sheep, and the company Weta Workshop, which became famous for its special effects in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

About the director

Jonathan King grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. Inspired by the early work of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, he made his first film with the help of a papier-mâché alien running around the school corridors. His work as an editor and graphic designer in music magazines brought him work filming music videos. He has made more than a hundred such videos, and was a two-time winner of the Best Director award at the New Zealand Music Video Awards. While working on television commercials he managed to write and create two short films – Still (2002) and the horror comedy Chogar (2003). The latter is approximate in tone to King’s feature film debut Black Sheep, in which a herd of peace-loving sheep become bloodthirsty monsters. After completing the film, King wrote the screenplay for the thriller The Tattooist (2007).