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World Fantastic Cinema

Black Sheep

Jonathan KING

New Zealand2006 87min 35mm color Korean Premiere

Synopsis

Henry, who suffers from a terrible sheep phobia because of a childhood trauma returns to the family farm to pick up a check from his brother Angus, who buys out his share in the family business. Henry intends to get out of his horrible old house (on the ground of the existence of sheep) as soon as he has done with it, but something unexpected starts to take place regardless of his plan. That is the appearance of cannibalistic zombie sheep. Now, Henry, who cannot even look at sheep, has to confront cannibalistic zombie sheep to survive regardless of his willingness. If a lot of horror movies, consciously or unconsciously, focus on the relationship with the existence of one's origin such as mother or father, this film deals with the relationship with brothers, a rival competing for survival. Henry's sheep phobia resulted from his hatred and fear toward his brother. This narrative in which Henry defeats the sheep and overcomes the phobia in the end is as good as a growth story of Henry, who finally becomes the owner of the ranch after eliminating his rival. Black Sheep is an outstanding film fascinating horror movie fans all over the world and set a box office record in New Zealand, which is the hometown of Peter JACKSON, master of gore films. The director Jonathan KING said that this film is an hommage to Peter JACKSON's early gore films such as Bad Taste and Dead Alive and completed it as an interesting gore film. Although it is too early to call him a "horror master," it can be said that another enormously talented director has emerged from New Zealand. (SOHN Hee Jung)

Diretor

Jonathan KING

Directing television commercials followed, while King wrote and directed two short films. In 2002 he made Still , which was selected to screen in the NZ International Film Festival. The following year was Chogar , a comedy-horror, which plays with a similar tone to the feature film he had already begun writing, and which has become Black Sheep.