Sharing movies with loved ones is a beautiful thing. As beautiful as it is, I think we have all experienced a moment while watching a movie with a parent or any comparable figure, where the thing taking place on screen was so uncomfortable you wish the couch would swallow you whole. We’re going to try and avoid that as much as possible! I hope this works as a sort of guide for you to know when you should excuse yourself to refill the popcorn bowl and avoid the wrath of a disgruntled or disgusted parent. This summer, I had the joy of both of my parents coming to town to visit, so I seized the opportunity to get in person reactions from my mom, rather than just zoom. Never one to squander something good, I chose something a little different from our usual fare, the meta zombie horror comedy ONE CUT OF THE DEAD. It was a gamble, but read on to find out if the biggest risks really do yield the biggest rewards.
Seeds of Doubt
We were off to a good start as my mom was scrolling through all the five-skull ratings of ONE CUT OF THE DEAD on Shudder. She doesn’t always enter into our viewings feeling very excited, but the heaps of praise were a big help. Almost immediately however, I feared she was beginning to sour on the movie as one of the first things we see is a director (Takayuki Hamatsu) screaming at one of his actors (Yuzuki Akiyama) until she cries. She clucked her tongue disapprovingly and said, “He can’t do that,” under her breath. Her distaste veered more towards confusion as the film continues and we watch this rag tag production crew shoot a zombie movie within the movie. She aptly deduced that it, “looks like it took about 12 dollars to make,” and initially, there is little to set it apart from the hundreds of other micro-budget zombie movies that already exist, so she was having a hard time figuring out what exactly makes ONE CUT OF THE DEAD so special. We’ll get there.
Quickly, the set of the zombie film within ONE CUT OF THE DEAD is overrun by actual zombies, and the actors are forced to use what they’ve learned from their characters in order to survive. My mom did not take kindly to the dialogue in this section and was getting increasingly frustrated that they were just stating the obvious a lot and being so overdramatic. If, like me, you’ve seen this movie already, you’ll understand why I just giggled and rubbed my hands together diabolically. And if you haven’t seen ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, go watch it, it’s fantastic! “Everyone’s just screaming, stop it,” she complained after noting that Chinatsu, the actress mentioned before, had either been screaming or crying for the entirety of the movie so far.
After much more screaming, and shaky handheld filming that made my mom dizzy, it seemed as though nearly all of our main characters were dead. This was very confusing to my mom because we were just about half an hour into ONE CUT OF THE DEAD. “There’s gotta be more to this movie,” she said, which caused me to rub my hands together diabolically once again. And then, the credits rolled and my mom was dumbfounded. You may already know that the entire first act of the film, shot in one take, is the final product of the movie within the movie, and the rest of the runtime takes us back to show the audience how it was made. It’s zombie movie inception at this point, causing my mom to shout, “Are you joking me, that was a MOVIE?” which is a hilarious thing to say while watching a movie. This was followed by, “Oh god, it’s beginning again,” which had me a bit worried for how the rest of our viewing would go.
Fear Factor
The biggest potential that ONE CUT OF THE DEAD has to be scary comes within the first act, before we are aware that the actors are just playing actors being attacked by zombies and not in any real danger. The terror takes a back seat in this movie, so there were very few moments that actually frightened my mom. Zombies in general really scare her, so she was a little on edge from the jump, pointing at every new character we meet and accusing them of being a zombie. This bled into real life as well when we heard the upstairs neighbors walking around and she decided that they must be zombies too. Ultimately though, the zombies are pretty chill and slow moving which made them a lot less scary to my mom. The worst part of it all for her was when one zombified crew member (Manabu Hosoi) spews a waterfall of barf, made worse when we later find out that wasn’t in the script within the movie, but a consequence of the actor getting too drunk before filming. Despite the tone of ONE CUT OF THE DEAD being less horrifying than some of our other picks, there was still one moment when a previously axed zombie stands up suddenly that made my mom scream so loud that she woke up my sister’s cat.
Pure Joy
While horror may not be the primary emotion evoked by ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, pure joy certainly is. Almost immediately, my mom was receptive to the movie because it’s so funny. If something makes her laugh, she is generally on board, and we were laughing hard and loud with stunning frequency. Right away, the characters’ reactions to the zombies are hilarious in how real they feel, ranging from exasperation to pee your pants terror. Even the more subtle moments, like a cameraman frantically wiping blood off of the lens to preserve the shot, sent us into uproarious laughter. Additionally, because it was funny rather than purely scary, my mom was obsessed with the effects and the various geysers of blood we saw on screen.
After the first act, ONE CUT OF THE DEAD shifts its focus to tell a really touching family story about a man making a movie and the ways in which his wife (Harumi Shuhama) and daughter (Mao) support him and make his dream a reality. It’s incredibly sweet, fun, and silly, particularly when we get to meet the entire cast of actors at the table read. They all have such distinct personalities and create so many little mishaps, my mom was absolutely enchanted by the ensemble cast. I was worried at first that all the super meta layers of ONE CUT OF THE DEAD would be too convoluted and annoying to my mom, but it is just a really light, nice movie and she seemed to be enjoying herself a lot. She had so much fun with the third act of the film which shows us the full behind the scenes perspective of the movie’s first act. She loved all the creative solutions the characters came up with, however she still hated all of the screaming. Her eyes were practically twinkling with joy when she turned to me and said that the movie wasn’t at all what she expected it to be. She was definitely geared up for a terrifying, bloody zombie flick and seemed so delighted that she could just relax and enjoy a non-threatening movie. The gore and the humor are incredibly well matched in ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, which is such a challenging thing to achieve, but it all comes together so beautifully here. Everything that my mom thought was dumb or cheesy in the beginning actually had a reasonable explanation and they were all so smart and so funny, she was just amazed. By the movie’s wonderful conclusion, I had full blown tears in my eyes as we were cheering and pumping our fists and bursting into applause when the (real) credits rolled.
Did Mom Like It?
So the time came to ask the age-old question: Did Mom like it? This time, we have a resounding “Yes!,” confirmed by her clapping her hands together and saying, “That was so good!” before I even asked her what she thought. 4/5 moms would recommend! She thought it was really, really sweet and ONE CUT OF THE DEAD is such an amazing example of the ways in which horror can be sweet and funny, right alongside being gory and nasty. It’s a great summer movie that really evokes the feelings of spending long, hot days out in the sun with your friends. This was heightened by a super-fun making-of montage running over the credits that my mom was obsessed with. We were both just so happy and pleased, I’m counting this one as a great success. Try it at home with your mom or other parental figure! You may be surprised by the results.
Tags: Columns, Family, Harumi Syuhama, Horror, japan, Kailu Nagai, Kazuaki Nagaya, Mao, Moms, Nobuhiro Suzuki, Riley Cassidy, Shinichirou Ueda, Takayuki Hamatsu, Tsuyoshi Sone, Yuzuki Akiyama, Zombies
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