Cannes at Home: Day 1 - 'One Cut of the Dead'

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, I had a lot of fun with the Cannes at Home project. It was meant as a way to dispel FOMO by running a homebound parallel companion to the most prestigious film festival in the world. Since we couldn't screen the new titles on the Croisette, we discussed their directors' past works. In other words: I'm back on my bullshit this year, and you're invited to play along. While this miniseries will focus on the Main Competition and its auteurs, the festivities didn't start with any competing titles. Instead, Michel Hazanavicius' latest film, Final Cut, opened the festival. It's the French remake of a Japanese zombie comedy, and you can read about it in Elisa Giudici's first Cannes Diary.

It only seems appropriate to kick off this parallel project with some thoughts on the original film – Shinichiro Ueda's One Cut of the Dead…

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (2017)

It's hardly surprising that Hazanavicius' new venture has inspired lukewarm reactions, as most of his post-Artist projects have. However, I sincerely hope that those disappointed with Final Cut don't avoid discovering the Japanese original if they haven't yet. One Cut of the Dead is an inventive delight for those who love the schlocky nature of low-budget horror. In addition, anyone who's ever fallen in love with the collaborative art of filmmaking is bound to find something to like. Admittedly, the movie's something of a metatextual lark, but it's also a love song, that  for all its guts and gore, ends on a note of artistic hope and joyful accomplishment.

Neatly divided into three acts, One Cut of the Dead is one of those flicks that it's hard to discuss without revealing spoilers. Seeing as a big part of the fun lies in the picture's shape-shifting twists, I shan't try but urge all those readers who haven't seen it to stop reading now. Stop doing whatever you're doing and devote the next 96 minutes to Shinichiro Ueda's nifty little gem. You can stream it at Shudder or AMC+ and it's available for rental everywhere else.

Anyway, spoiler warnings aside, the film starts with a 37-minute long take that's both a breathtaking feat of technical wizardry and a scrappy pastiche of made-for-TV Japanese horror. Indeed, that's both obvious in terms of style and text. We follow the cast and crew of a zombie film working within the ruins of a WWII military facility. Only the director is desperate, fearful of another financial failure, to the point he decides to throw caution to the wind and do a ritual to summon real zombies. No one else is aware of his plan, so it all goes to hell rather quickly when the monsters appear.

Caked in cheap makeup effects and fake blood, the actors look pre-mauled even before the first kill happens, giving a patina of artifice that's to be contrasted with the genuine stuff. What's more, everything is staged with a sense of cruel irony, twisting the in-film filmmaker's dream project into something of a pitch-black comedy. But of course, the true villain is the director, whose attempts at capitalizing on the carnage never cease. Despite its deliberate scrappiness, the first act could live on as a stand-alone short film, and I'd still give One Shot of the Dead a thumbs up.

Oh, but what awaits us in the next two-thirds is even better. As a set of Matryoshka dolls, the movie with another movie inside is also inside another movie. In the second act, One Shot of the Dead becomes a portrait of pre-production anxiety as we follow the personal lives of the cast and crew of the 'zombie movie gone wrong' we just witnessed. It's revealed we were watching the final product of a stressful live recording mounted with great ambition and even more nerves. The third act revisits that live event. Only our perspective is now behind the scenes.

Instead of being a run for survival in the face of mortal peril, this unorthodox horror farce becomes a marathon of movie ingenuity. It's pure chaos in that way all such projects are – hired actors can't show up at the last minute, some folks are drunk, others have bowel problems, and let's not even start on the troubles of performing the complicated camera choreography. While the laughs keep on coming, the most joyous aspect of One Cut of the Dead's final act is its earnest love for the power of collective effort, equating cinema to collaboration in an inspiring fashion.

In other words, it's a blast from start to finish. One Cut of the Dead will make you guffaw and maybe even a bit dewy-eyed by the end. I certainly never thought I'd feel so emotional about an improvised crane shot going right against all odds.

Comments

[thevoid99]

I heard this film is better than the recent remake as it is considered a classic as that I want to see first.

[nore]

I saw this at my then local film festival back in 2019, I think, and can't agree with Cláudio more - this is a hilarious delight that builds and builds to not only one of the funniest and most creative last acts in memory, but also doubles as a truly impressive technical achievement.

[Edwin]

I saw this back in 2019 and remember really urging others to see it only for most of them to be like “a Shudder original? haha no thanks.” Of course it wasn’t actually made by or for Shudder, that’s just how Shudder advertised it for a while since they had first and at the time exclusive American distribution rights, but it was really disheartening that a mere three years ago so many people thought that a movie that premiered on a “minor” streaming service could not possibly be any good. Oh well, their loss. This is a wonderful movie.

[Jack C.]

I have to say I'm not as charmed by the film as many seem to be. I found the expositional first act unbearably aimless and amateurish. And the fact that there's a 37 minutes delay between the set-up and the punch lines undermines the comedy and pacing overall.

I would recommend the Japanese comedy classic, Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald, to anyone who likes this film. It's a clear source of influence for Ueda, and in my opinion, a far superior film.