One Cut of the Dead Gets an Uncanny Remake with Final Cut

If you’ve seen the low-budget Japanese semi-zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead, the French remake Final Cut will be a strange experience. If you haven’t seen the Japanese semi-zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead, you’re too busy to watch Final Cut, or read about it; the original is on Shudder and AMC+, and an inventive delight awaits you. Go! Go while you still can! To be clear, Final Cut has its heart in the right place. Director Michel Hazanavicius evidently reveres the earlier movie and performs what amounts to a faithful cover version that may well reach audiences who might check out the new comedy from the director of The Artist, but would be inclined to take a pass on the descriptors “low-budget” and/or “zombie.” That said, even a faithful remake can ruin the original – not the movie itself, of course, which remains a delight in perpetuity, but its presentation, which is enhanced by a certain degree of surprise that could potentially be spoiled by the relatively unimportant and inconclusive matter of whether Final Cut is any good.

With that caveat in mind: The broader missed opportunity of Final Cut is to add another level of spinning plates to the original’s live-wire cleverness. (And again, if you can handle a blind recommendation, go watch One Cut of the Dead without reading further about its repurposed premise.) As before, the movie opens with zombies attacking the set of a zombie movie, a solidly meta idea with additional, mysterious cracks that become ever more visible. Though the zombies are supposedly attacking a group of filmmakers and actors, the “real life” horror seems a little sloppy, with some confusing dead air and stalled forward momentum. The colors look great – vivid primaries and verdant greens – while the movie wobbles and trips.

Viewers of One Cut of the Dead will know what accounts for this increasing shakiness. What I wondered during the second iteration was whether that somehow, on some invisible but perceptible level, newcomers might sense it, too. After about 30 minutes, both movies begin to spill the beans, jumping back many weeks to show the planning of a live broadcast about zombies attacking a film set. Rémi (Romain Duris), first seen as the intense director of the movie-within-the-movie, is actually a relatively laidback filmmaker who prides himself on completing his projects with no-fuss efficiency. His new assignment is to, yes, remake a Japanese TV project for French audiences on a new streaming service. Finnegan Oldfield and Matilda Lutz, among others, are actors playing actors playing actors, depending on how many levels deep you want to go. We see the difficulties and backstories that inform the planning of the broadcast, and then we see the broadcast again, from a new behind-the-scenes vantage point, turning seeming non-sequiturs from the opening section into call-forwards where set-up becomes punchline.