Written, edited, and directed by Shin’ichirō Ueda, One Cut of the Dead is a 2017 Japanese indie zombie comedy that has blown critics away. Inspired by Ryoichi Wada’s stage play Ghost in the Box!, the film is shot like a movie within a movie in the first half.
It follows a film crew with a low budget as they try to shoot a single-take zombie horror film for live television titled One Cut of the Dead (very deliciously meta, yes). The story eventually cuts back in time to depict the production and origins of the project from the cast and crew’s perspective.
Coming from extremely humble beginnings, One Cut of the Dead made box-office history in Japan as it became the only film to ever earn over 1,000 times its budget. Made on an incredibly low budget of just ¥3 million (£15,114), the film initially opened in an 84-seat Tokyo art house theatre for a six-day run in Japan.
Featuring unknown actors, One Cut of the Dead garnered incredible international success after it was screened at the Udine Film Festival — it placed as the runner-up in the audience vote at the festival — and went on to receive a wider release, including a re-release in Japan.
The movie grossed a whopping ¥3.12 billion (£15.7M) in Japan alone, making it the seventh highest-earning domestic film of 2018. It also garnered $30.5 million at the global box-office that year (approximately £31.1 million – adjusted for inflation in 2025).
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the film’s runaway success, director Ueda said: “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. 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.”
So successful was Ueda’s humble movie that a French-language remake titled Final Cut was commissioned. Starring Bérénice Bejo and Romain Duris, directed by Michel Hazanavicius — the remake was the opening film at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
With a rare 100 per cent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, One Cut of the Dead has received widespread critical acclaim since its release and was even named the ‘best found footage film’ ever by the review aggregator platform. It’s also the only found footage film on the site to ever receive the elusive 100 per cent perfect score.
While one critic said: “‘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.’
Another reviewer gushed: “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.”
A third critic lauded the film and wrote: “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.”
And yet another reviewer said: “Ueda’s film goes on to indulge [its] curiosity in endless head-spinningly clever ways – turning a riotous genre treat into a full-hearted love-letter to both filmmaking and film-watching alike.”
Audience reviews followed in a similar vein, with one fan writing: “Saw this at the cinema with my fiancé years ago, had no idea it was part of the 100% club, it definitely deserves its spot as it’s one of the most clever horror movies I’ve ever seen.”
While another declared: “A crazy concept which was successfully executed. A movie being shot in a movie. It is brilliant. The comedy, the acting, the details… Very impressive. It has a variety of convincing emotions to offer as well.”
One Cut of the Dead is available to stream on Shudder via Amazon Prime Video.