One Cut Of The Dead (2017) Review by Steve Wells

One Cut of The Dead is the most successful independent film in Japanese cinema history! Opening on just two screens, One Cut of the Dead, made with non-professional actors and a budget of just $27,000 grossed more than $30 million and spent more time in the Japanese Box Office Top 10 than any other film!

On location at an empty ex-water filtration plant, a filmmaker and his cast are filming a one take film about a zombie outbreak – when a real zombie outbreak actually happens, much to the delight of the director, but not so for his cast!

Following a stunning thirty-seven minute opening shot, worth the price of a ticket alone, the film then goes back to six months earlier to a meeting where the original idea and plans for the filming manifested, before we revisit whole opening shot again from behind the scenes – and it’s hilarious!

I was lucky enough to see One Cut Of The Dead at last year’s FrightFest, when a film I was planning to see was cancelled, and an extra simultaneous UK premiere screening was added to cope with demand for tickets. I went in unprepared to what I was going to see and like me, the audience totally lapped it up. There is B-movie gore combined with slapstick comedy and a brilliantly funny script, (providing you can keep up with the subtitles!)

One Cut Of The Dead ended up in my top 10 films of last year, and I can’t wait to see it again. It’s on a limited cinema run in the lead up to it’s DVD/Blu-Ray release and it’s well worth seeing on the big screen, and it proves that comedies are better watched with a big audience.

Hailed as ‘the best zombie comedy since Shaun Of The Dead’ (Indiewire), and sweeping top awards at over twenty film festivals, One Cut Of The Dead is not just for horror fans, but lovers of comedy in general, and is also one of the funniest films about film making out there.

Released on limited edition 2xBlu-Ray set on January 28th 2019, get those pre-orders in. This is one zombie apocalypse you do not want to miss.