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.
The idea that all of this is done in service of re-mounting a Japanese TV production does allow Hazanavicius to add a few funny running jokes of his own. He demurs on the issue of committing to more than that, repeating a lot of gags and micro-stories from the original – and viewers of One Cut of the Dead, even lacking (as I did) a picture-perfect recall of every twist and turn, might have an uncanny experience. Hazanavicius winds up blurring the line between the purposeful sloppiness of those first 30 minutes and the self-conscious timing challenges of reproducing such a deceptively intricate production. Some jokes feel like they’re introduced too late to truly pay off, while others emerge so early that they feel tired out by the end. The satisfaction of a job imperfectly done but unquestionably complete lingers without the same fever-pitch farcical thrill of the original.
Are these actual flaws, or is this just the woozy after-effect of staring at a highly specific re-enactment under a microscope? Honestly, it’s hard to tell. Little islands of certainty pop up beneath some of the actors: Bérénice Bejo, from The Artist, is funny as the director’s wife who disappears too easily into character; Finnegan Oldfield, playing an actor told by other characters that he could be the “next, French Adam Driver” has fun with his character’s endless, pointless nitpicking. Some of the business around them feels more frantic than funny. The dead air in the movie’s opening section is intentional, yet there are moments where Final Cut, the movie you’re actually watching, feels off – not through outright incompetence, but the eerie, imitative quality of a too-soon-too-little remake. Call it undead air.
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Writer: Michel Hazanavicius
Starring: Romain Duris, Bérénice Bejo, Finnegan Oldfield, Matilda Lutz, Grégory Gadebois
Release Date: July 14, 2023
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including Polygon, Inside Hook, Vulture, and SportsAlcohol.com, where he also has a podcast. Following @rockmarooned on Twitter is a great way to find out about what he’s watching or listening to, and which terrifying flavor of Mountain Dew he has most recently consumed.