“One Cut of the Dead” opens up new possibilities for movies! The theater was packed every day and was a melting pot of laughter and applause!

POV, connected to the lineage of mockumentary horror...? Unique work

"One Cut of the Dead" follows the format of a Dawn of the Dead movie (at least on the surface). A crew member filming a Dawn of the Dead movie in an abandoned building deep in the mountains suddenly turns into a Dawn of the Dead and starts attacking his fellow crew members. One by one, the crew members turn into Dawn of the Dead, and the whole process is shown in one take over the course of 37 minutes using a single camera. If you read this much, horror movie fans will get it. This film uses techniques that have become commonplace in horror movies over the past 20 years, such as mockumentaries (fake documentaries) and first-person perspective footage known as POV (Point of View Shot).

“One Cut of the Dead”(C)ENBU Seminar

The film that started the POV technique was The Blair Witch Project (1999). The plot of this film is that three students who went into a deep forest to research a witch legend disappear, and a year later a video they shot is discovered. The video is then edited and made into a film. This pattern has even become a genre called found footage (the great origin of this genre is Cannibal Holocaust (1980)). The footage in The Blair Witch Project is made up entirely of home videos shot by the characters, and is extremely difficult to see due to camera shake, but this promotes the audience's immersion in the work. Although almost no incidents occur in the film, the audience synchronizes with the characters and experiences a sensation that they themselves have become lost in a deep forest, a sensation never seen in horror films before. Despite the low budget of $60,000, this film was a huge hit, grossing $240.5 million worldwide.

This was the beginning of many films using POV and mockumentary techniques. Just to name a few, " Paranormal Activity " (2007), " REC " (2007), " Cloverfield " (2008), " Diary of the Dead " (2008), " Chronicle " (2012), " The Visit " (2015)... there are many more, but it can be said that POV is a technique that has dominated horror for the past 20 years. Furthermore, one thing that is inherent to the POV technique is the long take in one shot. If you use a documentary-like technique, a long take is inevitable.

However, these films all had a certain wall that they just couldn't overcome. "One Cut of the Dead" is a film that takes advantage of that wall with a brilliant idea.

An outstanding idea that takes advantage of the contradictions of traditional horror movies.