Jump Scare Issue #3: Shin'ichirô Ueda's One Cut of the Dead
Let me just address this right out of the gate–this week’s issue is late. I’m copping to that right up front because it’s important to me that you know I’m not trying to sneak anything by you. What can I say, I am but one lowly clerk in the haunted video store of your mind. Some weeks, you’ll find me here standing at the counter, twiddlin’ my thumbs waiting to hear the tinkle of that little bell over the door when you walk in. Others, you might find me unconscious on the floor, face down in a pool of blood because when I was bent over trying to clean out the tape return bin after close last night, I caught an unrewound copy of Critters 2 in the forehead that someone carelessly hucked through the return slot. Customers can be such savages. Not you of course…
This week, I’ll be covering Shin'ichirô Ueda's One Cut of the Dead. This movie really benefits from the viewer going in blind, so this week’s issue isn’t going to be quite as spoilerific as the others. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. I mean, come on–would I steer you wrong? Just take a peek over my shoulder there at that employee of the month plaque. You don’t get your name on there just by being the proprietor and sole employee of Jump Scare Video, you know.
In fact, I’m so confident that you’re going to want to see this one, I’m just going to pull up your account and ring you up now. Hey, it says the last thing you rented was… Critters 2!
Let’s get into it, you savage!
What kind of movie is it?
While it doesn’t exactly start out as one, One Cut of the Dead is a horror comedy. If you are one of the people who reads this newsletter, but doesn’t actually watch a lot of horror movies because they can be a little too intense for you, this movie is for you (I’m looking at you, Spud). This isn’t just a good horror movie–it’s a great film. It currently holds a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
One Cut of the Dead is all the more incredible when you factor in its production. It was the final project for a two-month acting workshop led by Shin'ichirô Ueda, who wrote and directed the film. The actors you see on screen are all students who attended the workshop.
One Cut of the Dead was made on a budget of approximately $25,000 USD and initially released in a single 84-seat art house theater in Tokyo for a six day run in November of 2017. Ueda has said in interviews that he originally hoped to sell 5,000 tickets in order to break even on the film’s budget. Ueda described the film’s initial release in an interview with Variety:
...two or three weeks into its first run at a small Tokyo cinema I started to realize something was happening. The first week was mainly older guys, regular indie film fans, but in the second week there were more younger people and women. Then I started seeing people in the street with One Cut of the Dead T-shirts on and heard people talking about the film. I've been doing indie films all this time and until now I never experienced anything like that.
After receiving a five-minute standing ovation at the 2018 Udine Far East Film Festival in Italy, audiences outside of Japan started to take notice of this microbudget horror gem. The film’s worldwide gross is currently reported to be $31.2 Million and it has played on over 340 screens in Japan alone. To say it was a hit would be putting it very lightly.
And now, the checklist:
Jump Scares: Some
Body Horror: No
Spooky Children: No
Sexual Violence: No
What’s it about
While I would implore you not to look up any information about the plot of One Cut of the Dead, the basic setup is this (quote from Wikipedia, which you should absolutely not look at to learn more about the film until you’ve seen it):
...the cast and crew of a low-budget zombie film called One Cut of the Dead are shooting at an abandoned water filtration plant. The director, Higurashi, argues with actors and eventually abandons them. A real zombie apocalypse then begins to the delight of Higurashi, who insists that the camera operator continue filming.
I know what you’re thinking. Oh great, another _________ of the Dead movie. This horse was beaten to death with the 2004 remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and then that horse’s reanimated corpse was beaten to death again by George Romero’s late-career films like Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead (which I actually unapologetically love) before he officially put a bullet in the horse’s rotten, radioactive brain with the irredeemable Survival of the Dead. I get that. Believe me, I do. Don’t let that scare you off. I like to think the title is an ode to the best of Romero’s work, but the film itself is an ode to the scrappiness that got Romero off the ground as a filmmaker to begin with.
But what does it all mean
Alright, listen… if you watch this movie, you’re not going to need me to sit here with a Critters 2 on VHS-sized dent in my forehead, typing out exactly what it means. It will be obvious. One Cut of the Dead is a celebration of filmmaking, of working collaboratively to make something you really believe in–when things go well and when they don’t–and the moment of pure magic experienced by movie watchers everywhere when they get to lay eyes on the finished product.
Goddammit, this movie is good.
Considering the circumstances under which it was made, it is impossible not to walk away from this film feeling inspired. I’m looking you, dear reader–if you’re not reading this on an iPhone, you probably have one (or an equivalent) in your pocket. That’s enough equipment to make a movie!
I don’t want to downplay the success of One Cut of the Dead–it has shattered box office records with a return greater than 1000x its budget–but, especially here in the English-speaking United States, not many people have seen it. The level of excitement and inspiration I felt when the credits rolled at the end of this movie reminds me of a quote about The Velvet Underground’s first album, which is most-often attributed to Brian Eno:
The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.
I have to believe horror cinephiles everywhere will feel the same way when they see this film. And I’m not the only one. Redneck raconteur Joe Bob Briggs had this to say about the film:
One Cut of the Dead is available for rent on Amazon Prime and available to stream on Shudder.
And now, here’s a little something to hold you over until next week: The Evolution of Horror Podcast. Host Mike Muncer is joined by a rotating crew of guest film critics to dissect the horror genre, one subgenre at a time. This is deep dive territory, sometimes picking apart films scene by scene. The podcast’s current series focuses on the “Mind & Body” and is extremely body horror heavy. I can’t recommend it enough.
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