One Cut of the Dead

As film crew shoots a low budget zombie film in an abandoned WWII facility, they are attacked by real zombies…

One Cut of The Dead is one of the few films, on a very short list of movies, that I have watched twice at a film festival. In this case, it was at Fantastic Fest way back in 2018 (the other films on that list are The Greasy Stranger and An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, just fyi). This means I enjoyed One Cut of the Dead so much, that I burned one of my limited chances to see the movies at the festival just to see this one again. That’s how much I liked this one. I’m not alone in this either. This is also one of the few films that I’ve seen in the theatre where, both times that I saw it, the audience spontaneously cheered at the film’s climax… the climax... meaning, not at the credits, but while the film was still going.

So, it’s good. I love it.

There’s only one instruction that you must follow if you’re going to sit down and watch this little low budget Japanese independent zombie film…

You gotta stick with it for at least the first half hour, okay?

You have to watch the first 37 minutes, through the title sequence and the credits. You have to. If you sit down to watch this, then you have to stick with it for at least that long. Honestly, the whole thing is only 90 minutes, and you should really just shut up and watch until the end. Like you’re so fucking busy? Who do you think you’re fooling here? It’s just 90 minutes.

BUT… if you can’t promise that you’ll devote the whole 90 minutes, then at the very least, you have to promise you will watch the first 37 minutes. This is because, if you back out before that point, you won’t know what the movie is actually about. You’ll think that you’ll do. You’ll think that you know, but you will be wrong. And then, if anyone ever brings this film up, and your dumbass then decides to opine on what you felt the film’s failings were, everyone who has actually seen the movie will not only then know for sure that you haven’t actually seen the movie, but that you’re also a huge dumbass and completely full of shit too.

If you want to live your life like that, that’s on you.

But if you do make the commitment, and stick around for those first 37 minutes, then you should be aware… you may not be all that impressed with those first 37 minutes. And that’s because it’s definitely a one-cut, hand-held, low budget zombie movie, warts and all. You might be like “This is fun, I guess, but so what? What’s so great about this? It looks like community theatre on community access. What’s the point?” And that is totally fair. But like I said, stick with it. And also, don’t wander off, don’t just let it play, you should pay attention to what’s happening in these first 37 minutes, because not only will it all make sense in the end, but a lot of the silly nonsense that happens in that first 37 minutes actually turns into some really great jokes over the next hour.

Also, maybe don’t read to much about this film before You see it (Except for this, of course). You should try to see this film knowing as little about it as possible. It’s not that there’s a big mystery or anything, it’s just the magic comes from how it all unfolds, and while I could talk about it now, and you will probably still enjoy it, it’s better to just see it for yourself the first time.

So, the initial hook of One Cut Of The Dead is that it’s not just a POV movie, there are also multiple One Shot scenes.

We’ve talked about this before, but a POV (or Point of View) film—sometimes called a “Found Footage Film”—is what you call it when the camera is operated by one of the characters in the movie. It’s a cheap way of making movies, as well as a cheap way of heightening the tension by aggressively controlling what the audience gets to see, when they get to see, and how. As just a few examples, sometimes POV Films pretend to be documentaries, or "mockumentaries" like What We Do In The Shadows, Troll Hunter, Borat, This is Spinal Tap, or Lunopolis. It's often a popular way to make a sit-com too, like The Office or Modern Family. Sometimes, the idea is that these films are a kind of "last broadcast" thing, like Grave Encounters, Rec, The Wicksboro Incident, or Late Night With The Devil. These are the versions that are most often known as “Found Footage” films specifically, because the hook is that the film we’re watching was discovered somewhere, maybe buried, maybe hidden, maybe lost in some evidence room, and now we’re watching it in order to find out what happened to the people who filmed it, although it’s a pretty good bet that these people are all dead, and probably as a direct result of whatever happens on the footage. These are usually the most popular kind of POV Film, like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, or Exhibit 8. There are tons of these kinds of POV movies.

But just word of warning… Never watch Megan is Missing.

Trust me.

A One Shot is the other key initial hook of this film. That’s an old trick where an entire scene or sequence is filmed in one continuous take, using the same single camera. Hitchcock‘s Rope is a famous example, even if that one famously hides its cuts whenever someone walks in front of the camera or, when the camera moves behind a pillar or something, a trick Children of Men uses in its own Oners. But then there are other films, like opening scene of Orson Well’s Touch of Evil, and of course, the Copacabana sequence in Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which are examples of real Oners. They are flashy and self-indulgent and a bit of a show-off, sure, but they’re also real cool.

So you’ll see some of that here.

So, in the first 37 minutes…

The cast and crew of a low-budget zombie film called True Fear are shooting at an abandoned water filtration plant in Japan. The director, desperate for success due to mounting debts, and frustrated at the actors' work, has written his latest script based on the plant’s supposedly haunted past, and in keeping with that, as part of the film, he has painted a big bloody pentagram on the roof of the building for the film’s big climax. Unfortunately, drawing that pentagram on the roof accidentally casts a spell, and soon the cast and crew are beset on all sides by real life zombies.

At that point, it becomes a desperate fight for survival. But the whole time, the director—driven insane as his film unravels all around him—demands that they continue filming their zombie movie. As the horror mounts, and the zombie hoard grows in numbers, the cast and crew begin to turn on one another, as their chances of making it through the night begin to grow slim.

Until finally, there is only one left…

Then the film goes on for another hour in the most delightful and enjoyable way, revealing itself to a heartfelt comedy about fathers and daughters, as well as a true love letter to making movies, while also talking about the value of making art, and of holding true to your own artistic vision. In the end, it becomes the kind of unexpected and charming little film you just don’t see very often.

A Japanese independent satirical zombie comedy film from 2017, written and directed by Shin'ichiro Ueda, and based primarily on the stage play Ghost in the Box! by Ryoichi Wada, it was made with a budget of only about $25,000 American, some of it crowdfunded, and was filmed over the course of eight days with a cast of mostly unknown actors. It’s a true independent film.

It then went on to gross $27.93 million American in Japan, and over $30 million American worldwide, which means that it made box office history by making over 1,000 times its budget. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it’s considered to be one of the best found footage film ever made, and it is the only found footage film to have ever received a rating of 100% as of this writing.

So… if you’re spoiler-phobic, don’t read this next paragraph.

The gist of the whole thing is that the film follows a film crew who have been tasked with making One Cut of the Dead, a zombie horror film that must be shot in a single take, and even worse, also while on live tv. It starts out as a film within a film, and then jumps back to the beginning of the production and then on into the chaos behind the scenes during the production. So, what might seem at first to be a shitty, low budget handheld camera POV horror movie about a zombie movie crew running into actual zombies, ends up being a very clever and very funny film about how the show must go on, celebrating the absolute magic that can result when a group of people try to make art together. But One Cut Of The Dead is not just some inside baseball film about making movies, it’s also about the love of the game itself, as well as a love letter to movies, and to the absolute chaos behind the scenes, and ultimately, why people do this shit in the first place, especially low budget efforts like this. The whole thing is reminiscent of the wild and unpredictable films that filmmakers like Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi once made, the kind of movies that felt like you were riding your bike down a hill, feet up off the pedals, shaking and rattling and picking up speed, where the whole point is that you don’t know where the film is going, but you love the ride. And while you definitely don’t have to have ever made a movie yourself, or to even have been in a play, to understand and love this film, if you have…

This is a film you should definitely see.

I’ve seen a lot of the more mainstream critics out there say something along the lines of One Cut Of The Dead “breathes new life into the zombie genre” and that makes me feel like they didn’t actually watch the movie, or maybe they’re just bad at their job and didn’t actually understand the film. Because this film isn’t actually a zombie movie. I mean, it is… in a way, I suppose. Technically. But that’s not what it’s about, not at all.

One Cut Of The Dead is a film about the joy of making art, even when it’s hard, in fact, especially when it’s hard—which is something that “AI Artists” will never ever know, because they aren’t real artists. This is a film about holding true to your own artistic vision. It’s a film about making art for the sake of making art, and when you do, you give it your all. Because of all that, it’s uplifting and inspiring, and that’s why people cheered at the film’s climax.

This means that One Cut Of The Dead is the perfect film to go into 2026 with.

Pom!