Final Cut of the Dead

Of all, i am disgusted by the zombie genre, cause they are dead eating the living that dies wakes up into eating other living humans, and animals, there aint much space for the developement of new inklings and ideas..

so whats new here, well its french, and they try to make a comedy over an earlier feature movie called z, its all planned from the director in secretes, cause he wants the directors cut to be as real as possible, there are some gushing special effect and some one arm jacks that crawls around with or without its parentbody... and thats its.

Loads of well known french actors that play around with loads of blood and gore, but as it is x.mas day and the woodstick saltsmoked sheeprib meal(pinnakjøt in norwegian) from yesterday evening are still regurgitating my oesophagus, tingling the nether ends of my tonsilles that i ectomized many years ago, this is just meeehhh entertainment today. Almost 2 hours of panic and slash isnt food for a nearly braindead grumpy old man.

Not normally too interested in remakes of films in other languages, but Artist director Hazanavicius being involved got me interested, and glad it did. There's a huge amount of fun to be had here - it is as much comedy as horror - with a great cast & director enjoying playing with the B movie concept of it all.

The opening chunk drops you right into the film being shot in a disused building, deliberately wrong-footing the viewer (also leaves you wondering why the French characters are all using Japanese names), only for the later two thirds of the film to show what we had been watching and put it all into context. It's a nice way to approach it and felt quite satisfying (to me, anyway). It may not be genius, but it is fun - make a good pizza night bit of viewing on a weekend.

A movie within the movie, within the movie... At first it was supposed to be titled Z - like Zombies - but the idea was abandoned because the meaning Z related to Russian army in Ukraine war, the atrocities...So they changed the title. It is brilliant, intelligent, unusual, adapted from a short movie, but for me it was a bit too complex to follow. I was unable to summarize it to myself. The movie takes place in an abandoned gigantic movie theater complex facility, the perfect setting for a film about movies making. As DAWN OF THE DEAD took place in a gigantic commercial center, the perfect setting for a horror film ciriticizing the consumerism American way of life. It is a comedy but, I repeat, worth for the screenplay. It is only a bit too confused for someone like myself. The connection to Russia is certianly not Z, for the reasons explained above, but the movie within the movie evokes the Russian Matryoshka wooden dolls, dolls within dolls.... And strangely, Romain Duris played in LES POUPEES RUSSES - Russian Dolls - back in 2005.

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.

One of those films where you soon realise and appreciate the 'one take' aspect but once the 'scene' had been completed, it really takes-off big time.

I couldn't stop laughing - giggles and the belly sort - when all is made clear. The only language I have is English (at a push) so the subtitles were imperative. All the actors threw themselves whole-heartedly into the mayhem with the initial commissioning to the rehearsals then the actual filming of the film all made glorious sense!

Goodness knows how long it took.

Getting passed the first 30mins turns into another movie entirely and the viewer is amply rewarded.