Horror film, The Ferryman, a United Kingdom/New Zealand co-production to star the Emmy-nominated John Rhys Davies and Silver Bear winner Kerry Fox, goes into production March 31.

The film shoots in Auckland and Waiheke Island and follows a group of twenty-something-year-olds as they charter a boat into the South Pacific, intending to have the trip of a lifetime. But they soon stumble upon an evil that demands vengeance at any cost.

The New Zealand creative team behind the film are seen as some of the best of the island's new generation of filmmakers. They include director Chris Graham, whose recent feature film directorial debut was Sione's Wedding, writer Nick Ward, who wrote Stickmen, and producers Matthew Metcalfe and Richard Fletcher.

Metcalfe last produced Nemesis Game, and Richard Fletcher co-produced River Queen, is head of production at production company Silverscreen, and is a former business affairs head at the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC). They are producing with Alan Harris from Atlantic Film.

"The Ferryman is a return to the classic horrors of the late seventies and early eighties, such as Evil Dead, The Thing and The Fog," said Metcalfe. "A genre containing classic characters that we love and hate, an evil that will strike both the good and the bad, with those classic one liners that come just before someone is dispatched to the afterlife."

The film is financed by the New Zealand Film Production Fund, theNZFC, and two UK companies, Prescience Film Finance and Lip Synch Productions.The Ferryman and Black Sheep, which is also in production, are just the latest in a long line of New Zealand horror films - filmmaker Peter Jackson started with horror -- and both are being represented internationally by NZ Film.

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