One Cut of the Dead

Film Review

Shane was probably quite right to pre-warn us that this is a film that you really need to stick with. I imagine some people may have walked out of the cinema after seeing the credits roll at the 36 minute mark because they thought the film had ended. To be honest I would also not be surprised if many people didn’t even last that long before deciding to leave. The poor acting, cheap special effects and inexplicably long pauses made the first section of the film a somewhat challenging watch. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this section, but I wasn’t sure at the time whether I was enjoying it for the right reasons.

The next section of the film makes it clear that it was in fact a film within a film… within a film. Filmception! To be honest this middle section was quite boring, but I suppose there was some necessary character development and an explanation of what the hell was actually going on.

The final section of the film was something special. You essentially see the first section again, but with all the behind the scenes work on display as well as the many hilarious mishaps and creative ad-libs use to keep this ambitious project on track. This section rewards your patience and it all makes sense in the end.

The director’s wife got really carried away, going off script and attacking the crew and even kicking her husband in the balls. I can see why she was banned from film sets, but I can’t work out why she wasn’t sectioned. Maybe this sort of thing is more acceptable in Japan.

The most impressive thing about this film is that the whole 37 minute sequence was filmed in a single take and this only took 6 attempts. Apparently they actually nailed it on the 2nd attempt, but a crew error meant that the camera stopped recording part way through. I bet that guy was popular!

The second most impressive thing is that the film cost $25,000 to make, but managed to generate 1000 times this amount in box office revenue.

I was going to score the film 1 or 0.5 lower (based mainly on my overall enjoyment of the film) but I have decided to factor in my appreciation of the effort and ingenuity involved in the making of this film and my love of lengthy single shots.

4 Poms out of 5