Final Cut finally makes zombie movies worth watching again
The zombie movie Final Cut is going to face a few problems in finding an audience. For one thing, zombies reached such a saturation point in American culture around a decade ago that it’s hard to sell anyone but the most hardcore horror fans on yet another zombie movie. And for another, it’s really hard to convey how clever, intricate, and ultimately joyous Final Cut is within the confines of a trailer or plot summary. The first teaser trailer for the American release of Final Cut gets at the movie’s goofy, over-the-top tone, but can’t really bring across the full scope of why the movie is so much fun.
Final Cut is a remake of the bloody, silly Japanese zombie movie One Cut of the Dead, but Michel Hazanavicius — director of the Oscar-winner The Artist, and more pertinently here, the enjoyable OSS 117 French spy spoofs — punches up some of the gags and adds new twists. Both movies are essentially Noises Off-style “front of house vs. back of house” stories, showing the audience two different perspectives on the same events.
In the first half of the film, a hapless TV director looking for a big break (and hoping to impress his highly unimpressed adult daughter) agrees to shoot a one-take, live-broadcast zombie movie as a stunt for the launch of a new network. The results play out on screen, with a number of odd hiccups and irregularities that don’t make much sense the first time through.
In the second half, audiences get to see exactly what was going on behind the scenes to explain all the glitches — including an actual zombie breakout that’s only a comparatively minor part of what goes wrong on the film. Final Cut is much more comedy than horror, and meant for people who love movies about moviemaking — but it’s also a
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