One Cut of the Dead

A low-budget zombie film is being shot in an abandoned building. The director wants real reactions, and then real zombies arrive. That section runs as a single 37-minute take with visible problems in it: odd pauses, hands knocking the camera, scenes that will not end. The rest of the film shows you, one by one, why each of those problems happened. Shinichiro Ueda directed. The production was run jointly with the Enbu Seminar drama school in Tokyo, and the cast was not made of known names but of students chosen after a two-month workshop. It was shot in eight days in June 2017 at a disused water filtration plant. The 37-minute take was landed on the sixth attempt. The budget was 3 million yen, about 25,000 dollars. It took 3.12 billion yen worldwide, about 31.2 million dollars, earning over a thousand times its budget and entering box office history. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 100 percent from 98 reviews. As of July 2025 it is the only found footage film with a 100 percent rating. There was also a rights dispute. The playwright Ryoichi Wada argued that the film adapted his stage play Ghost in the Box. The parties came to an agreement and Wada's contribution was credited in the film. Who it is for: viewers who like films about making films and structures that explain themselves in retrospect. Who it is not for: anyone who will give up in the first half hour. The film looks bad on purpose and only pays that back at the end.