One Cut of the Dead (Kamera o Tomeru na! "Don't Stop the Camera!") is a 2017 Japanese indie horror/comedy written and directed by first-time filmmaker Shin'ichirô Ueda and starring a cast of then-unknown actors. The film was originally the final project of an acting workshop delivered by the Enbu Seminar drama school in Tokyo. It had a budget of just $25,000 and made roughly $31.2 million at the worldwide box office, thus breaking records for the highest ratio of budget to gross return. At the Japanese box office, it became the seventh highest-grossing domestic film of 2018.
The story opens with the filming of a low-budget zombie movie in an abandoned water treatment facility, and its hack director yelling at the two leads for the lack of realism in their acting. When the filming is interrupted by an actual Zombie Apocalypse, the crazed director demands that they keep shooting the film, and events spiral out of control. The title "One Cut of the Dead" refers to the fact that this film is delivered in one long continuous take.
Due to the nature of the plot and the twists therein, it is highly advised that you watch One Cut of the Dead with as little prior knowledge as possible.
A French remake titled Final Cut, directed by Michel Hazanavicius and starring Romain Duris, came out in May 2022.
Tropes which appear in One Cut of the Dead include:
- All Part of the Show: In the fictional One Cut of the Dead, the characters are slow to realize that a real zombie outbreak has occurred because they're making a movie about zombies. In the last act, the audience watching the live broadcast aren't aware that some of the things they're seeing are unscripted and real.
- Chekhov's Skill: The makeup lady states that she studies self defense and demonstrates two martial arts moves, both of which she uses after she goes crazy. This is done a second time when we see the actress watching self-defense videos before filming begins, and we see that she used these moves for real during the filming of the Show Within a Show.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The final act explains all of the things in the first act that might have seemed odd as being products of a largely improvised film production due to a number of unexpected disasters.
- The boom mike operator tries to slowly crawl outside in the background during a strange moment and then insists on leaving for no reason. It turns out that he was nauseous from drinking the wrong beverage.
- The two actors and makeup lady engage in strangely awkward conversation. They're stalling for time while the production improvises.
- The director shouts at the camera, "Don't stop filming!" even though it's not a diegetic camera. He's the real director, and he's telling the booth to not cut away to an error screen.
- The blood splattered on the camera due to Camera Abuse gets wiped away by a hand that emerges from behind the camera, even though it's not a diegetic camera. This is a mistake in the film production, and the cameraman has no choice but to get rid of the splatter.
- The camera gets knocked to the ground and eventually picked up again, even though it's not diegetic. The cameraman threw out his back, so his assistant had to pick the camera up and replace him.
- The director bursts out of a random door shouting his catchphrase "Action!" only to get beaten down. This wasn't a planned appearance. He was just trying to stop his wife from improvising, but she beat him up instead.
- When the male star and the makeup lady are fighting, the camera holds on the female star for a really long time, and she glances at the camera as she screams. She's stalling for time as the real production staff subdue the actress playing the makeup lady.
- The confrontation between the male star and female star repeats the fake-out romantic beat several times before concluding. She's again stalling for time while the crew set up a human pyramid to replace the camera crane.
- The camera work becomes very awkward and choppy as it cranes up. The crew are passing the camera up a human pyramid because their crane broke.
- Someone shouts "Cut!" just before the sequence ends. This is the real director calling cut to the film.
- Foregone Conclusion: The final act has a bit of this due to the structure of the story: We know what will happen in front of the camera because we already saw it. The question is how and why everything happened the way it did.
- Foreshadowing: Lots of things seem odd in the first act that hint to it all being a live film broadcast.
- Genre Shift: The first 35 minutes are a pretty straight-up zombie horror movie. From then on, we shift to drama and even comedy when we're shown all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans that plague the in-universe show.
- Gratuitous English: The Show Within a Show is called One Cut of the Dead in English, in spite of being a Japanese film. It's written on the crew members' shirts.
- How We Got Here: After the first act, the film flashes back to several months earlier and leads us back to the point of the first act.
- Human Ladder: The broken crane is replaced this way, with all the extras and almost the entire crew creating a massive pyramid to get the final shot.
- Kiai: Harumi demonstrates a self defense move that requires you to shout "Pom!" in the process. When the actors ask about it, she explains that it startles the opponent and empowers her move. When she's seen in a flashback watching a video demonstrating the move, the instructor is quite specific about shouting "Pom!"
- Market-Based Title: The Japanese film title's translation is "Don't Stop the Camera!", but this is changed in English speaking regions to "One Cut of the Dead", which is the name of the Show Within a Show.
- The Oner: As referenced in the title, the whole first act is a single, 30-minute-long take that is performed without hidden edits. The rest of the film is about how the fictional filmmakers went about planning and executing it. The credits show some behind-the-scenes footage of how the real filmmakers did it.
- Once More, with Clarity: Might as well be called Once More, with Clarity: the Movie. It is shown later how all the horror scenes are executed and how in some cases, a lot of improvisation was needed. Fittingly, the horror movie is in found footage form and the behind the scenes is shot as a conventional film.
- Show Within a Show: One Cut of the Dead turns out to be a film within a film that is itself about making a film.
- Zombie Apocalypse: This is what the Show Within a Show and Show Within a Show Within a Show are about.
