Is not easy to make a horror film nowadays, and Director Takayuki Higurashi knows that all too well; The budgets gets smaller and smaller, the main lead actors tend to be picky and annoying, the producers constantly complicate the filming, and sometimes you get an actress that can’t deliver the lines even if her life depended on it. To make matters worse, you could even end up in a real zombie apocalypses in the middle of the shoot, meaning you could find yourself without a cast or crew in a matter of minutes.

What can you do then?

Film everything!

The show must go on! Pain is temporary, but film is forever!

Just as the director starts yelling «Action» instead of «Let’s get out of here!» the cast realizes that they will have to make use of all their talents in order to survive, not only in the show business, but this new set with unexpected visitors…

…Although, maybe, just maybe, not everything is what it seems.

All right, that’s it, Now go watch the movie, don’t ask any more questions, you can thank me later..

What? You really want more details?

Ok, But I still think that the less you know beforehand, the better, let that be on the record.

«One Cut Of The Dead» or as know origiinally in Japan, «Kamera O Tameru Na!» («Don’t Stop the Camera») could sound like another run-of-the-mill ultra low budget zombie comedy, the kind that reeks of lack of originality and that should be left to finally rest in peace, but that is when writer/director Shinichiro Ueda takes the script and slap us in the mouth wearing a white glove, and delivers one of the most original films in the last 10 years, a love letter to independent film making and something that should be appreciated for anybody that enjoys cinema, not only by those that dream with making a movie in their lifetime. And for the record, yes, I am calling this movie a masterpiece.

Now, without giving anything away, but still setting you up for your better enjoyment, I warn you that «One Cut Of The Dead» is a film that will need you to be patient for the first 30 minutes or so, specially if you are not a fan of B-cinema (or rather very bad Z-movies) or if you dislike Japanese movies when they go off the wall, but trust me, this film will give you a very satisfactory payoff if you stick till the end, and you will enjoy it even more on the second viewing. The script has a lot of very funny moments that flow very naturally. As you might imagine, there are a couple of twists, and although I felt that the pacing was good, I can see how some people might feel the second act a little bit heavy. I would recommend to see this film on the big screen and with more fans of the genre, but I will warn you that the movie does not have a lot of gore, so the fans of tons of blood and guts might be a little bit disappointed, still the film has a lot of good stuff to compensate for that.

The acting is very good, even when they try to be bad (that’s a hint for you) and I thought the pacing was very good. We could argue about the quality of the special effects, or the use of the hand held-camera shots that gets to be a little bit annoying, (not to mention the extreme zooms in and outs), but all that is part of the charm of «One Cut Of the Dead» so, like i said before, be patient, you will be rewarded.

«One Cut Of The Dead» was directed and written by Shinichiro Ueda. The film, that just had a budget of 3 million yens (A little bit more than $28, 000) surprised the Japanese audiences little by little and ended up getting 3.12 billion yens (almost the $29 millions), on the festivals that the movie was presented made a lot of waves. On the cast the film has the talents of Takayuki Hamatsu, Harumi Shuhama, Yuzuki Akiyama, Mao, Kazuaki Nagaya and Manabu Hosoi.

The film will have a U.S. theatrical release on Friday 13th this September, and soon will be available on the Shudder streaming service.