Movie Review: One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Shin'ichirô Ueda   

Written by: Shin'ichirô Ueda Based on the play by Ryoichi Wada.

Starring: Takayuki Hamatsu (Director Higurashi), Yuzuki Akiyama (Chinatsu), Harumi Shuhama (Nao), Kazuaki Nagaya (Ko), Hiroshi Ichihara (Kasahara), Mao (Mao).

 

I feel like a broken record saying this, but at this point, if you’re going to make a zombie movie, you have to come with an original take on the genre. Truly, there hasn’t been an original take in 50 years – and everyone is now just playing in George A. Romero’s sandbox – and although some filmmakers have come up with some remarkably original takes, at this point, they are all played out. The Japanese film, One Cut from the Dead, certainly doesn’t reinvent the genre – but it is a novel take on the zombie comedy. The opening 37 minutes, all in one take, is remarkable, hilarious and daring – and even the things that don’t make a lot of sense, still work. The hour that follows that 37 minutes isn’t nearly as good – but it is still entertaining and funny, and explains all those little things that didn’t seem to make sense in the opening act. This is an extremely low budget film – and it became a huge hit in Japan – and will be a cult film for years to come. I didn’t fall head over heels for it – but I can see how some might.

 

The concept of the movie is simple – a low budget horror movie is being made at what looks to be an abandoned warehouse, but legend has it may be a site where the Japanese government used to conduct experiments. They are making a zombie movie, and the director fancies himself a David Fincher – requesting take after take, and being very hard on the cast if they don’t get things exactly right. And then, of course, the cast and crew of the zombie movie get attacked by real zombies – and after initial confusion, it becomes apparent it’s real, and there’s a lot of blood and guts, and weird maneuvers. The cinematographer is told by the director to just keep shooting – and so he does. And what we see in that opening 37 minutes is one marvelous take.

 

If the rest of the movie were up to the first 37 minutes, this would be one of the best horror films of the year – and one of the best comedies. Yes, it’s all low budget, but that’s built into the premise, and it works wonders. It is funny, fast paced and bloody – and unrelenting 37 minutes of pure B-movie bliss. You could not ask for more. But alas, the rest of the movie isn’t up to that first 37 minutes. It’s still good – just not the inspired craziness that we saw. (You may want to stop reading here – I really had no clue what the movie was about when I started watching – and I think that helped).

 

The last hour of the film is about how that first 37 minutes came to be. What we watched was supposed to be the live kick-off of something called the zombie channel – a 30 minute, single take, live movie, directed by Higurashi (who played the demanding director in the movie – but is really the nicest guy in the world). He is a hack director – whose motto is it gets done quick, and average. He has a demanding film student daughter – who wants perfection, a wife, who used to be an actress, but stopped because she got too obsessed with her roles (and yes, she ends up in the movie as well) – as well as a pretentious star as his leading man, and a pop star as his leading lady. Everything crazy in that opening 37 minutes – including why a 30-minute plan, turned into a 37-minute movie – is explained along the way.

 

The final hour of the film is fun – there is no denying that. And it is amusing to see how the sausage is made (it may even more amusing if there were cameras rolling on the making of One Cut from the Dead, but then again, perhaps that would be too meta). But it’s something we’ve seen before – an Ed Wood type, who determines that this time, he will go for broke. It is happy, silly movie.

 

But that first 37 minutes is the type of thing legends are made of. It really is inspired and director Shin'ichirô Ueda, and his cast and crew, pull it off brilliantly. That’s the reason to see the film – and that’s the reason this is likely to remain in the cult canon for a while.