Final Cut of the Dead

This could have been quite a funny spoof on all things zombie, if only it were just twenty minutes or so shorter! It all centres around a production team making a (very) cheap and cheerful film full of fake limbs, tomato ketchup and singularly bad acting. Acting rivalries and romantic affairs are causing director "Rémi" (Romain Duris) no end of problems as the money and time start running out. Just when things look like they could get little worse, it appears that they have managed to awaken a few "real" zombies and so things become seriously perilous (and messy) for all concerned. The latter part of the movie seems to have two functions - to explain just why the first half hour was so terrible and to then suggest that with some Japanese creative intervention - they all take on Japanese names and get some of their funding - the film gets magically better. Sadly, it labours that joke just once too often. The parody elements run out of steam and it becomes rather a puerile and unfunny slapstick-style enterprise with some bad actors portraying other truly bad actors. The last ten minutes of continuous filming of their filming of the fight against the axe-wielding undead is still quite funny, but by then I was starting to shift in my chair. It does have it's funny moments - but just nowhere near enough of them.

It starts with a low budget horror movie with very bad actors, but it's already very funny. You have 30 min of 'what the hell am I watching' with bad quality images and all. And then they explain how the movie was made (a movie within the movie, yup), and you laugh even more. It's not clever comedy for sure, it's something where you need your brain off, and it's French humour. But if you ever have the chance, you might like it.

'Final Cut' may be a rare case where the more you know going in the more you're likely to enjoy it. Because of the way the film is structured, the first 30 minutes are very sloppy and poorly put together. We as an audience don't know why yet, so we are just left to think that the whole film is going to be poorly made like this. There is of course a reason for this, which makes the film quite brilliant in the second half. But I fear this one could lose a lot of people in those early minutes, which would be a shame.

This is such a good idea for a movie. I understand it is a remake of a Japanese film with some clever tie-ins. I've often watched one-take films and thought about all the things that could (and potentially are) going wrong behind the scenes that we will never know about.

As I said, this isn't the worst film to know a thing or two about before going in. When I read the synopsis for the film it didn't sound like my thing at all. It really isn't anything like what is described there. This one was a lot of fun. 7.5/10.

I saw this during a sneak preview, so I had no idea what this movie was about. It was lots of fun.

It starts off bad. Really bad. Like they tried to go for "so bad it's good" but then failed at that. If it weren't for the fact that I was sitting in the middle of a row with people on either side I would have just left.

But after half an hour, there's a change of pace, and yet another 'what am I watching' moment, but then it all starts making sense, and it becomes really funny and easy to watch.

Fun, smart, great actors. After "the Artist" and "la classe americaine", Michel Hazanavicius pay once again tribute to cinema, with honesty, talent and all his wit.