‘NZ is the horror capital of the world’
Jacob Jaffke produces slasher films, but, writes Virginia Fallon ,it was in Aotearoa that he experienced real gore.
It took a trip to New Zealand for horror movie producer Jacob Jaffke to finally get up close and personal with real gore.
While filming slasher movie X on a Manawatu¯ farm last year, the film’s producer says it was the reaction of the property’s 90-yearold owner to the fake stuff that he’ll always remember.
The film has plenty of slaughter scenes but Jaffke recalls the crew’s efforts didn’t impress a real-life farmer. ‘‘Joan says ‘that’s not what blood and guts look like’; goes and gets a tractor, puts a dead sheep in the frontend loader, drags it over and guts it: ‘that’s what blood and guts look like’.’’
Jaffke’s back home in the California desert and wistful when he speaks about his experience shooting both X and its prequel Pearl in Aotearoa. He loves NZ and has every intention of coming back, hopefully for good.
Set in 1979 Texas, X is written, produced and directed by Ti West and follows a group of young filmmakers who set out to secretly make an adult film on an elderly couple’s rural Texas property, only to wind up fighting for their lives. Pearl takes place decades beforehand.
Jaffke’s long wanted to film in the country – crediting Peter Jackson’s films for putting it on his radar – and with the coronavirus raging overseas, found the perfect opportunity.
‘‘I was looking at spending a million dollars of my very small budget on [Covid] testing and social distance protocols in the US. That’s crazy and just means we’re making a worse film.’’
NZ’s Covid-free status meant he could instead pour that money into things like set dressing, prosthetics and crew. The perfect location to stand in for Texas and the Government’s film subsidies were the icing on the cinematic cake, and our lack of alligators and other murderous animals were the cherry on top.
‘‘There are no snapping turtles and I didn’t want any actors to lose digits swimming in a pond with them.’’
Even his first ever run-in with an offal pit didn’t dim his experience of the country, though it did amuse the crew of Weta Digital when he recounted the experience.
‘‘I thought that’s starting to explain a lot why all these crazy horror movies were filmed here in the 80s and 90s. I’m beginning to understand what you guys are into.’’
Jaffke’s produced a string of films for A24 and has a bit of a soft spot for horror. ‘‘When you get something like X which is funny, terrifying and weird that’s when I’m having the best fun.’’
As a kid he enjoyed all the popular horrors, though Bambi and ET were the two movies that really horrified him. ‘‘They’re imprinted because of the traumatising aspects of the films, not the wholesome aspects. Bambi: the fire, then his mom’s dead, that just messed with me.’’
Jaffke made the most of his time in NZ, and didn’t even waste the time spent in
managed isolation. There, West wrote the script for Pearl while Jaffke did the production plan, and the prequel was shot only five weeks after X wrapped.
Another favourite memory is how the crew navigated the issue of meeting iwi requests to not film the Whanganui River. ‘‘Given what the movie is, and given what the river is with the same rights as a person, that was understandable.’’
Jaffke had visions for shooting on a bridge with the city behind it, and floated the idea of using special effects to replace the river water with scenery from somewhere else. It worked, and everyone was happy. ‘‘It was a really good problem to solve.’’
Future-wise, the producer says much of his career plan involves NZ. He says it’s already the horror capital of the world, and would love to get a bundle of movies going here. ‘‘Creatively and from a technical standpoint it’s all there. You have everything at your fingertips to make something special at a world-class level.’’
And unlike the well-trodden trope of international visitors singing Aotearoa’s praises from afar, Jaffke has put his money where his mouth is. ‘‘I applied for residency, I don’t think I did it right, but the dream is not dead. We’ll find a way.’’