'One Cut of the Dead' (2017)



My journey to watch every single zombie movie ever made, that I can get my hands on anyway, continues with a movie that I'd heard a lot of good things about but never seemed to find the time to watch... until now.

'One Cut of the Dead' is one of those films that seems to keep popping up in various '20 Zombie Movies To Watch Before You Die' (or become one of the living dead) lists but you never seem to find out quite why, just that you really need to watch it. Almost like they are trying to hide something about the movie... I'm normally a little wary of this approach (as I've been burnt before by films that shouldn't have been on those lists at all) but I figured it was way past time that I gave 'One Cut of the Dead' a go... so I did :o)

'One Shot of the Dead' tells the tale of a low budget Japanese zombie movie being shot in an abandoned water filtration plant, rumoured to be the site of experiments carried out by the military. Shooting is not going well at all and the director, Higurashi, quits the film in disgust. Suddenly, the cast and crew find themselves in the middle of a real zombie outbreak and Higurashi decides to make the most of the opportunity to add some real zombie action to his movie. The camera is rolling again and it won't stop until the film is done.

'One Shot of the Dead' is a really difficult film to talk about as, to be honest, it's such a good film that I really want you to watch it for yourself and have the experience that I did.
I'm not going to lie though, the first half an hour looked awful. Funny but a bit stilted and flat (even when the real zombie apocalypse kicked off). At this point, I was glad that I was watching it with a free Shudder trial instead of having bought it.

And then the second half of the movie kicked in and everything changed.

Like I said earlier, it's really difficult to talk about without giving away spoilers (and I really don't want to give any spoilers for this film of all films) but lets just say, the whole of the film just changed. All of a sudden, all the negative bits in the first half suddenly made sense and I was just laughing my head off watching it all come together. All of a sudden, there was a real charm to 'One Cut of the Dead' and you realise that it was there the whole time; you just have to see it all for it to make sense.
It's not often that a zombie film makes me feel happy ('Little Monsters' is the only other one that I can think of right now) but I came away from 'One Cut of the Dead' with a big grin on my face because I got blindsided, in the best way, by how happy this movie is. And then I went and bought myself a copy because it's worth having, even after my Shudder trial ends.

If you haven't seen 'One Cut of the Dead', you really need to do something about that; even if you wouldn't normally watch a zombie movie at all. Trust me, it's worth it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘The Long and Hungry Road’ – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Black Library)

Image
After not finishing ‘Witchbringer’ (not the book’s fault, I still think it could be worth your time), I thought I’d change pace a little and go for a short, sharp burst of something instead. Something that would blow a few cobwebs away and wake me up a bit :o) Now in my experience, there’s nothing shorter and sharper than a Warhammer short story so that was the direction of my reading taken care of. And as far as the focus went… I’ve read a few Warhammer tales, in my time, but I’ve never read a tale that looks at the events of the 41st Millennium through the eyes of the rapacious Tyranids. So when I saw ‘The Long and Hungry Road’ on Amazon, it pretty much chose itself. To face a Tyranid invasion is a waking nightmare. The skies darken with spores, your mind echoes with alien screeches, and countless weapon-organisms descend upon you with razor teeth and claws. How much greater would your horror be, to realise that the hive ship above thinks nothing of your fate – that it crushes you
Read more

'Mad God' (2021)

Image
It's that time again where Youtube throws me a 'Shudder' advert and I think to myself, 'I'm paying five quid a month for this, I really should watch something, lets give it a go...'   This time round, 'It' was the film 'Mad God' and the trailer was this mad batshit crazy shot of stop-motion horror that was over before I'd had a chance to get my head round it; leaving me pretty unsettled but with no clear idea just why that was... That's all I need sometimes, I was in... It's almost an hour later and, damn, that was grim, bleak and... What the hell just happened? A corroded diving bell descends amidst a ruined city and the Assassin emerges from it to explore a labyrinth of bizarre landscapes inhabited by freakish denizens. That is about all I can tell you about 'Mad God' and that's only because I had a quick look on IMDB and that was all IMDB could tell me... 'Mad God' is any number of things but it's not
Read more

‘Worms of the Earth’ – Robert E. Howard.

Image
Page Count: 27 Pages I have a copy of this on my shelf and the plan was to pick it up for a read on the way into work this morning. Well, that was the plan but I was half asleep, leaving the house, and totally forgot… No matter though, that’s what the Kindle app is for (although if I’d been a little more awake, I’d have read it off Project Gutenberg instead, you can find ‘Worms of the Earth’ Here ). 99p later and my ‘commute reading’ was secured 😉 I always seem to fall into the trap of just reading ‘Conan’ stuff whenever I fancy reading a little Howard. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just that there’s a lot of his other stories out there that are more than worth your time when you come across them. ‘Worms of the Earth’ is very much one of those tales but you knew that already, didn’t you? You didn’t? You should do something about that, take it from me… After witnessing one of his subjects die at the hands of Roman governor Titus Sulla, Bran Mak Morn vows vengeance on Sulla but at w
Read more