Film Review - One Cut of the Dead

Review:

One Cut of the Dead

THERE'S something inherently dangerous about films about film making. It seems like every year there is another Oscar nominated film about how the power of films or show business can save the world - especially whilst Weinstein had his slimy paws all over it. Whilst the power of the media and entertainment in our globalised world is undeniably, it's probably best that the industry doesn't masturbate all over itself in public whilst staring at its own reflection. In that sense, Once Cut of the Dead is a refreshing watch.

A Play Within a Play

ONE can only imagine that when Shakespeare helped codify the meta-textual literary technique of a play within a play, he was imaging that one day in the far future he'd be setting the groundwork for a lighthearted Japanese zombie romp whose playful ambition and attention to detail are a joy throughout. Well rest well big Willy! One Cut of the Dead is finally here to realise that vision.

Something's amiss in the state of A Warehouse Somewhere In Japan: a small crew of filmmakers are making a zombie film. We're introduced within the fictional movie within the movie at first, but One Cut is not interested particularly in this facade, and the curtain is pulled back rather quickly. Before long, however, the cast and crew are beset by a real horror, and the fanatical director sees this as his chance to make the greatest horror ever made. A real life horror story.

Ten Minutes Until the Audience Explodes

THE first ten to fifteen pages of a script are very important - it has to contain the hook that will not only bring readers into the world, but also persuade studios and producers to make the movie in the first place. Some movies show their working very bluntly - Sluaghterhouse Rulez a couple of years ago being a specific example of this done poorly in comedy horror. By contrast One Cut is fluid and natural in the way it establishes the dynamics between characters, the motivations and personalities of those characters and the situation they find themselves in. It's all delivered with a speed and overtness that could very well have been artless and blunt, but a clever script keeps it from ever being those things.

It is not, however, a script that keeps its secrets particularly well. What is going on, and what the next twist is going to be, is not exactly super hard to figure out. This, again, works for One Cut, rather than against it. Proper foreshadowing and use of poetic irony might de-highlight surprise factors, but they allow the contrivances of the movie to feel entirely natural.

Look After the Pennies

IN light of this, the joy of One Cut is not the "what", but rather the "how". If you can see a twist or turn coming, it is the fastidious attention to detail that will take you off guard. Things half-glanced earlier often become important or expounded upon. The clever scripting allows a lot to be done with as little as possible. The nature of the project itself - a single cut movie - demands a certain exactitude, but rather than being their as a necessity, the attention to detail is what allows the story to flourish. Many of the big surprises come from things that you noticed but thought were innocuous that later turn out not be!

Both in premise and in execution, One Cut is a convoluted beast. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for the director to lose grip of the story, or for the audience to become naturally lost. So much of the visual storytelling, and of the specific use of setting within the movie, helps with this too.

As they say the the devil is in the details. Or the zombie. I don't know. Maybe they say that in Japan.

Laugh Until You Cry Die

IT would be trite, perhaps, at this point to the link tragedy and horror have with comedy. Many of the most enduring pieces of comedy have a black heart. In theory, horror and comedy are natural bedfellows, but in practise they're often terrible roommates. Sometimes they're trying to be too funny, sometimes they're not funny or scary, and all too often they disregard character and narrative in favour of lampshading cliches in the least imaginative way possible. Even very good recently examples have struggled to juggle both tones properly - Jordan Peele's ambitious and often impressive Us springs immediately to mind.

Where One Cut distinguishes itself is that at any given moment it really knows what it is and what it wants to do. It's never actually reaching to do anything too out there, for all of the script and filmmaking's ambition and intricacy. The nuts and bolts of the story are simple and filled with heart. This, ultimately, is what will make you laugh and what will linger with you.

One Cut of the Dead is a joy. It's silly and fun, it'll make you laugh and it'll make you feel good, and since we're all dying of the plague and the capitalistic structures of globalisation are collapsing around us, plunging us all into a new dark age, what else could the doctor order? Not medicine certainly. Not since Brexit.