Horrorfest 2021: One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Written and Directed by Shin’ichiro Ueda
Starring Takayuki Hamatsu, Mao, Harumi Syuhama, Yuzuki Akiyama and Kazuaki Nagaya
Japan

You think the name says it all but… wait. Am I getting into spoilers in the first sentence? I guess so. Don’t read this review if you don’t want to be spoiled. Just know the movie’s worth watching, but you have to stick with it. Don’t give up in the first half hour.

Okay. Is everyone gone? Am I alone? All right. I’ll talk about the movie now – ONE CUT OF THE DEAD is a movie within a movie within a movie that starts off as a found footage zombie movie, all shot in one take, as zombies ironically attack a film crew who are in the midst of making a zombie movie. This goes on for around a half hour, or maybe a little more, until suddenly… roll end credits.

Then the REAL movie begins – I went into this thinking the opening sequence was the only gimmick the movie had to offer. I suspected there was something up the movie’s sleeve the way people told me about it, I just didn’t know exactly what. So, I watched the whole opening sequence thinking this was all the movie was going to be – a mediocre zombie movie where the only main difference between it and its predecessors is that it was all done in one shot. So, while I found parts of it to be clunky or odd, I kept myself entertained paying attention to how it was all one shot and thinking about how difficult it must have been to make.

Turns out the REST of the movie is about the characters within the movie mounting this production, and then executing it. So the first half hour of the movie is the finished product – you see that first. The middle half hour is pre-production, then the last half hour is production. The last half hour is the best part, as everything starts to come together – you suddenly begin to realize why all the stuff you found clunky or odd in the first half was the way it was, as the film crew desperately tries anything to keep the live, one shot zombie broadcast going.

And this is where the most unexpected thing happens – the movie turns into a heartwarming “hey everybody, let’s put on a show!” type of flick, where you’re rooting for the underdog film crew to pull this off and marveling at how they made it happen, while also being amused with all the last minute changes they have to make on the fly.

Stay for the end credits, where you’ll see the ACTUAL crew shooting the FAKE crew. This thing has more layers than INCEPTION.