Japanese zombie horror made in 8 days makes 1000 times its budget

A Japanese horror has earned 1000 times its budget so far.

One Cut of the Dead, from director Shinichiro Ueda, was made for just over £21,000 but has since earned over £1.56 million in ticket sales.

The indie zombie movie was made in just eight days and features a cast of unknown actors but won several awards both at home in Japan and abroad.

The film’s opening is a 37-minute long single take, a filmmaking tool being used far more often in movies nowadays, especially horrors like Assassination Nation and Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House.

The director says the film, which had an initial theatrical run of just three weeks in Tokyo in June, says its exponential success has been down to word-of-mouth.

“Two or three weeks into its first run at a small Tokyo cinema I started to realise something was happening,” Ueda told The Hollywood Reporter. “The first week was mainly older guys, regular indie film fans, but in the second week there were more younger people and women.

“Then I started seeing people in the street with One Cut of the Dead T-shirts on and heard people talking about the film. I’ve been doing indie films all this time and until now I never experienced anything like that.”

One Cut of the Dead has a 100% approval rating on reviews aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes and stars Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, Harumi Shuhama, Kazuaki Nagaya and Hiroshi Ichihara.

It was screened in the UK earlier this year at FrightFest and will appear at various film festivals in Ireland, Derby, Leeds, and Wales before getting a theatrical release on 4 January 2019, at the following cinemas:

London’s Prince Charles Cinemas
Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema
Glasgow Film Theatre
Cardiff’s Tramshed Cinema

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