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Director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) shoots a zombie movie in an abandoned warehouse with actors Chinatsu (Yuzuki Akiyama) and Ko (Kazuaki Nagaya), but really loses it when for the umpteenth time Chinatsu doesn't get her death scene right and storms off set, leaving the two actors and makeup woman Nao (Harumi Shuhama) to their own devices ... and soon they find out the warehouse is attacked by real zombies - which in the eyes of Higurashi is a great turn of events ... and it's eventually found out that he actually used some black magic to bring the dead back to life. Only now the dead are attacking his cast and crew, and eventually pretty much everybody but Chinatsu and her director are killed, turned, killed again - and having successfully fought through a horde of zombies, lets her rage out on Higurashi, who's still trying to give her directions, by cutting him to pieces with an ax ... and this is where the story, shot in one take, ends, only about a third through the running time of the movie. From here it's flashback to a month earlier when mild mannered director Higurashi, who does mostly corporate stuff, is approached by a fledgling TV station to do a one-take zombie movie that's broadcast live - which is of course a major effort, but doable with enough planning and rehearsals. But on shooting day, everything seems to go wrong, starting with an actor shooting up, leading to Higurashi taking on the character of the film director himself, his wife Nao becoming a last minute replacement as the makeup girl, but almost ruining the movie by getting too deep into character and almost axing another actor to death, the lead zombie (Hiroshi Ichihara) turning up on set dead drunk, the crane for the finale being pushed over a ledge, and so on ...

It's really how meta can you get when a film features its own (made up) making of, explains its earlier incongruencies away and to a certain degree even makes fun of itself - and it works like a charm because it doesn't put an emphasis on its own being meta but focuses on being just good entertainment, starting with the film within the film which is a really exciting piece of zombie cinema, and continuing with showing all the characters in a different light in the "making of", and getting quite some comedy out of their interactions, as well as the accident-prone actual shoot. Son in all, a very fun movie based on a very original idea.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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