When the credits started to roll for One Cut of the Dead – after one odd nonstop, 37-minute take – I figured that maybe I just didn’t “get” Japanese horror. I was a bit annoyed, too, because it’s a 25-minute drive to and from the theater, and I hate to make any trip in which the roundtrip travel time exceeds the time spent at the destination.

But it turned out that this is just my week for non-linear (or Rashomon-style) storytelling. (See my review of Cruel Hearts.)

After those credits, the film resumes and jumps back a month, enabling the audience to see the who and the why behind that strange opening take. A third and final section then takes viewers back through the action in Scene 1 with a comedic, behind-the-scenes perspective showing why things appeared odd the first time through.

So I’m glad I went, and that I stayed.

Rubber-faced actor Takayuki Hamatsu is terrific as the director of both the film and the film within the film, evoking crazy in the first part, bewilderment in the second and determination in the third. As Chinatsu, the “final girl” of the horror film within the film, Yuzuki Akiyama commands the screen with her innocence and resilience. However, she fades a bit portraying an attractive but boring and vapid actress in second and third chapters. Kazuaki Nagaya does a good job playing Chinatsu’s loyal and chivalrous (but horny) boyfriend in the first take, then pivoting into the rude, pretentious heartthrob in the behind-the-scenes footage. Harumi Shuhama provides comic relief as an assistant director in Part 1, then as a frustrated wife and mother in the rest of the film.

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Stuart J. Robinson practices writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.

Tags: Harumi Shuhama, horror, Japanese, Kazuaki Nagaya, One Cut of the Dead, Phoenix Film Festival, Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, zombie