THE Movie to see this Summer!

Xerafin · May 3, 2007

Forget Spiderman, Pirates, Shrek, and all the other re-hashes. THIS is the movie of the Summer!

Ever heard of ovinophobia?

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New Zealanders' fear of sheep realised

By Xavier La Canna

May 02, 2007 04:44pm

EVER heard of ovinophobia?

"It's the completely unfounded and irrational fear that one day this was going to happen," according to Henry, the lead character in the New Zealand horror film Black Sheep.

By "this" he means some of New Zealand's millions of sheep becoming psychotic and turning on farmers.

Black Sheep is the first film written and directed by New Zealander Jonathan King and, since its release in March, it has become the country's highest grossing horror movie.

Helping to round up the punters is the movie's poster tag-line:"There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand - and they're pissed off."

For low-budget horror movie buffs, the film may be described as Shaun of the Dead meets Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

The film centres around the character Henry (Nathan Meister) who as a child developed a fear of sheep - ovinophobia - following the death of his father.

Henry goes back to the farm he grew up on years later to discover his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has been genetically modifying sheep, blending them with human DNA.

Environmental activists Experience (Danielle Mason) and Grant (Oliver Driver) try to find out what is happening and, as they say, all hell breaks loose.

King says the film took about three years to make from when he began writing the script, and cost well under $NZ10 million ($9 million).

"I love films that transport you somewhere else and give you a different experience from real life. Those are the films I love going to, and want to make," he says.

Black Sheep is his first attempt at feature film-making, after earlier efforts with short films, music videos and television commercials.

"It just popped into my head. There is no story of childhood trauma on a farm. I should make one up," he says of his inspiration.

The film shows New Zealanders are not afraid to poke fun at themselves.

Well-known jokes about Kiwis' fondness for sheep are confirmed, with a cringe-worthy sheep-human sex scene.

"That had to be in there," says King.

"Those jokes are always there. They are always in the consciousness. Whenever we go overseas people make those jokes to us ... so why not take that and put it in a film and have fun with it."

Special effects for the film were created by New Zealand's Weta Workshop, which handled the effects in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and King Kong.

Since Black Sheep premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival it has won the Audience and Special Jury prizes at France's Gerardmer Film Festival and two Silver Ravens at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film.

King has other movies on the way.

A film he co-wrote with Matthew Grainger, The Tattooist, will be released later this year and he is working on another project intended to be a science fiction film for younger viewers.

The date for Black Sheep's Australian release has not been finalised, but it will begin screening in the United States in June.
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They're coming for you!

El Chup · May 3, 2007

Damn it, that's going to be like a Welshman's porn movie.

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THE Movie to see this Summer!

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THE Movie to see this Summer!

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