Direction: Shinichiro Ueda
Country: Japan
Shinichiro Ueda’s low-budget One Cut of the Dead is an uneven, cunning, and riotous zombie parody conceived with obsession and commitment. It's possibly a new cult movie for the gorehounds, These characteristics are also shared by the director within the film, Mr. Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu), and his family: actress wife Harumi (Harumi Shuhama) and perfectionist daughter Mao (herself).
I confess I almost stopped watching the film during its nonsense 37-minute opening sequence. Yet, after that bloody B-movie premise shot with a dizzying handheld camera, the hysterical horror farce started to make sense, following a clever structure and displaying occasional hilarious situations.
A brand new TV channel dedicated to zombies hires Hirugashi to create a one-take-only episode to be broadcasted live. He can only use one single camera and his personality suddenly transfigures from kind-hearted to iron-handed. With limitations in both resources and time, he then goes into the process of gathering the possible cast and crew, including the actor Mr. Hosoda (Manabu Hosoi), who has an alcohol problem and lives in a happy-sad state, and sound technician Mr. Yamago (Shuntaro Yamazaki), who struggles with severe intestinal disorders.
Starring unknown actors, One Cut of the Dead is progressively enjoyable and it works, in part, because it doesn’t. After all, the whole movie is built on failure.
