Dir. Shin'ichirô Udea (2017)
A film crew making a horror movie finds themselves being attacked by zombies... kinda.
Bringing something new to any genre is incredibly difficult at this point. It feels like everything has already been done, and even "unique" films are usually just a play on something else that has already been done. Rarely, though, you come across a film that has actually never been done before, a new and inventive idea that it takes a lot of guts to even attempt at all. Sometimes, of course, things haven't been done because they don't work, and attempts to make them work will generally fail spectacularly. When it does work, though, you have the makings of a phenomenon, a creative masterpiece that breaks all boundaries of anything that came before and one that helps pave the way for future inventive filmmakers to try their hand at something different.
I'm not going to go too much into the plot, because this is one where it's really best to go in knowing as little as possible. The general idea of the plot is that a film crew decide to make a zombie horror movie at an abandoned factory that was once used during military researchers' experiments on raising the dead back to life. Surprise surprise, the crew gets attacked by actual zombies, and the cameras keep rolling as they try their best to survive the undead threat.
There's obviously a lot more to it than that, but I won't go into that here. One Cut of the Dead is a tremendous film, wholly innovative in a way that you won't see coming on its way to becoming a cult smash hit around the world. In fact, relative to budget, it is the fourth most profitable film in history, coming in right behind The Blair Witch Project as it made roughly 1,000 times its budget in global sales. It's an incredible number anyway, but it's all the more impressive because this is a Japanese flick that never got the wide release in American cinemas that TBWP did. It's a film that deserves to be seen by even more people, even as it has become an immediate cult classic with genre fans.
Director Shin'ichirô Udea has created perhaps the most meta horror movie ever made. It's uproariously funny, a magnificent commentary and exploration of filmmaking itself, and it just so happens to take place in the world of horror that we love so much. This is a film that could have been made about any genre, but it works so damn well as a zombie flick that it's impossible to imagine it as anything else. It's a film that lends itself to an immediate rewatch, if for no other reason than that you want to figure out how they were able to bring this all together on film. There's so much of the film that is heartwarming and charming, and it's so much more complicated than expected at first glance.
One Cut is such an amazing film that it has already produced a remake, last year's French meta-take on horror, filmmaking, the original, and, yes, remakes Final Cut! (Coupez!). I've already extolled the virtues of that film here on the site, so I won't rehash that here, but suffice to say that One Cut is even more brilliant than its reimagining. It feels almost fake to be gushing so much over a film like this, but it is a truly incredible movie, and it's a film that I've never heard a single bad word about.
The one downside of the film is that the first half hour or so of the film feels like a movie you don't want to be watching. Please, please, please don't turn the film off after the first thirty seven minutes. You're going to want to, but I promise you it's worth sticking out. There is a point to everything that happens, even if you can't imagine what it will be when it's happening. Watch, pay attention, and wait for the brilliance that I promise you is coming. It's more than worth the wait.
Who this movie is for: Meta horror lovers, Horror comedy fans, Switcheroo aficionados
Bottom line: One Cut of the Dead is genius. It's one of the most inventive horror movies I've ever seen, it's a brilliant take on filmmaking and horror, and it's just an all-around incredible film. If you haven't seen this one before, you absolutely need to watch it this Halloween season. It's streaming right now on Shudder (and you can check where else it's playing right below in our JustWatch tag).
