A ‘daring’and ‘refreshing’ horror film with a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is streaming right now on Shudder via Amazon Prime Video.
Released in 2017, One Cut of the Dead has been dubbed an essential horror for both zombie and found footage fans alike.
Directed by Shinichirou Ueda, it follows hack director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) and his crew as they travel to a WWII facility to shoot a low-budget zombie film.
However, they soon find themselves fighting for their lives when they’re attacked by real zombies.
It was made for just ¥3 million (£15,114), and made a whopping ¥3.12 billion (£15.7M) in Japan,making box office history by earning over 1,000 times its budget
One Cut of the Dead received widespread critical acclaim, being named the best found footage film ever made by Rotten Tomatoes.
It is the only found footage film on the site to ever receive a 100% score.
On the site, the critics’ consensus reads: ‘Brainy and bloody in equal measure, One Cut of the Dead reanimates the moribund zombie genre with a refreshing blend of formal daring and clever satire.’
In their review, Austin Chronicle said: ‘One Cut of the Dead isn’t just charming. It’s an earnest and funny love letter to all the microbudget dreamers who use all their heart and ingenuity to make their movie.’
Los Angeles Times wrote: ‘A master class in endless narrative inventiveness and an ode to the resourceful and collaborative spirit of hands-on filmmaking, One Cut of the Dead amounts to an explosively hilarious rarity.’
Bloody Disgusting added: ‘Shinichiro Ueda’s zombie comedy is one that purposefully pretends to offer familiar zombie schlock only to rip the rug out from under us in an innovative, hilarious way. The level of detail is uncanny, and the comedy is equally matched by charm.’
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Little White Lies said One Cut of the Dead was ‘a genuinely clever and loving tribute to cinema at its most homemade,’ while The Hollywood Reporter lauded it ‘the perfect antidote to zombie fever.’
IndieWire said: ‘Drunk on its own DIY energy and deeply in love with everything it’s doing, One Cut of the Dead is a euphoric ode to the chaos (and compromises) of genre filmmaking.’
Speaking after the film’s release, director Ueda opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about the runaway success of One Cut of the Dead.
‘Well, there are various levels of “hit,” but two or three weeks into its first run at a small Tokyo cinema I started to realize something was happening,’ he said.
‘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.’
One Cut of the Dead is streaming on Shudder via Amazon Prime Video
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