Fresh flock of horrors _{by Isabella Smith}

It’s been 20 years since Black Sheep. Now it’s baaack with a fresh flock of horrors, in cinemas on the 12^th of November.

Shot at Avalon Studios, in Ohariu Valley, and around Pōneke and Wairarapa, Black Sheeps is a celebration of Kiwi culture, while also poking fun at it too. I caught up with director Jonathan King to discuss the horror-comedy’s bloody return.

The countdown is on for the release. How does it feel?

It’s incredibly exciting. It’s been 20 years since the last one. Then it all started and finished so quickly. Shooting began about 11 months ago, and we’ve been working on it nonstop since. It only finished 10 or 12 weeks ago. All through that I was pinching myself. We wrote it very quickly too. Everything happened within two years. And because it happened so fast, there wasn’t any second guessing, which made it quite thrilling.

We’ve screened it a couple of times for the cast and crew. For strangers to see it, I’m both nervous and excited.

At the time of making the first Black Sheep, did you anticipate how big it was going to get?

No, I didn’t. And you know what? That wasn’t the case when it first came out either. It did well, but it wasn’t a smash hit. It travelled around the world and people found it, which was super exciting. But since then, it’s lasted, which is what’s different. People continue to find it and say, ‘Have you seen this mental film from New Zealand?’

I couldn’t have imagined that. Two years ago, we had screenings of the 4K restoration, and they were the best screenings it ever had. People came. We had a good time. It’ll be great if people bring that attitude to the new one too.

20 years on, is the sequel dealing with a different New Zealand?

Funnily enough, the first film exists in a slightly timeless vacuum, which possibly explains why it’s lasted. There’s maybe one cell phone in the original film, but it’s not trying to talk about 2006 New Zealand. Whereas this one talks more about 2026 New Zealand. Time has passed, and it’s also passed in the Black Sheep world. Sometimes you go back to a sequel and nothing’s changed, it’s just a reboot of the first. But we’ve all been so changed by COVID. Even the way climate change now exists in our minds and how we think about what scientists tell us, how we share information, and misinformation, it’s all changed.

I’ve got this franchise that has specific scientific rules of its own: if you get bitten by a sheep, you turn into a weresheep. I got to stomp around in that imaginary world but also have fun with things from the real world. It gave licence for the silliness to be a bit sillier, because we live in a pretty silly world.