Can't Cut, Won't Cut

One Cut of the Dead (2019) has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. In fact, it's almost 2 movies in one. And I am going to spoil many of them. If you haven't seen this, don't read this yet - go see it and come back. For now, all you need to know is that this is a Japanese movie, made for the Shudder horror streaming channel.

It starts out in an old abandoned industrial building - a zombie is menacing a pretty girl. Then the director yells cut and we see that this is just a movie. The director is pretty intense, but the makeup lady seems nice. She kind of awkwardly tells the two actors about the urban myth of this building - that horrible experiments were done there during the war. They hear a noise outside - oh my god! Real zombies!

That was the story I heard - real zombies show up on the location of a cheap zombie movie. The other thing I had heard is that the first scene is one continuous take - no cuts. You don't notice it at first, then you can't miss it. And some things start making you notice that there is a director and camera man in the movie, but they aren't making this film. There is another camera and crew filming the fake director and camera man making the fake zombie film inside the real zombie film. Confused? Here's an example.

At one point someone is running away from a zombie, and the point of view (the camera) is suddenly on the ground. It stays there for a while - someone dropped the camera. Finally someone picks it up and follows the action. And when some "blood" splatters on the lens, you actually see someone's fingers wipe it off.

Then, at about 37 minutes, the movie ends with a crane shot of the final girl. Followed by: "Six months earlier". We meet the director, making a commercial. A producer wants him for a job. The director says, he's fast, cheap, and yet the quality is average. He's just right for this job: A movie made for the new zombie channel - made with one camera, no cuts, and broadcast live.

This section of the movie uses normal editing, with cuts and excerpts from TV, etc. It shows our director taking on this impossible task, partly to impress his blase teenage daughter. It shows the cast, the walkthroughs, then the big day.

This is the payoff. Now we get to go behind the scenes of that long single take from the first 37 minutes. You see why some scenes were awkward. You get to see the camera filming the real movie about the fake movie. You see who dropped the camera and who picked it up. All the way to the final crane shot.

So you have three acts: A movie, shot in one take. The circumstances that lead up to the movie being made. A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie in Act 1. It reminded me of Noises Off. That's about a play, and you see the rehearsal, then backstage for the first performance, then finally, the last performance. There's the same quality here of seeing something interesting and odd, then discovering why and how.

I should note that although the first act is a zombie movie (with a zombie movie inside!), the actual body count of this movie is zero - the zombies are all fake. It's a movie about movies, especially the type made fast and cheap, where the quality is at least average.