It’s not a guarantee that winning Best Picture will make you a household name here in America. Case in point: Michel Hazanavicius, who won the honor in 2011 with The Artist, a film that is now looked at as…well, sortof a gimmicky choice. Even the film’s star and Hazanavicius’ frequent collaborator, Jean Dujardin, who won Best Actor that year, has failed to catch on. And so after a couple of middling efforts in The Search and Redoubtable (ugh), Hazanavicius is back with his latest, zombie remake Final Cut.
Even this arrives with a bit of baggage. A remake of Shin’ichirô Ueda‘s cult favorite One Cut Of The Dead, it was originally meant to debut at Sundance 2022 but was pulled at the last moment when in-person screenings were canceled due to the pandemic. The film ultimately debuted at Cannes, but has taken its sweet time getting a domestic release.
The film stars Romain Duris, Bérénice Bejo, Matilda Lutz, Finnegan Oldfield, Grégory Gadebois, Sébastien Chassagne, Raphaël Quenard, Lyès Salem, and Yoshiko Takehara who also had a role in Ueda’s version.
Here’s the synopsis: Oscar® winner Michel Hazanavicius’ remake of Shin’ichirô Ueda’s cult hit One Cut of the Dead follows a chief (Romain Duris, L’Auberge Espagnole) charged with making a live, single-take, low-budget zombie flick in which the cast and crew, one by one, actually turn into zombies. Featuring hysterically unhinged performances from Oscar® nominee Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), Matilda Lutz (Revenge), and Finnegan Oldfield (Corsage), Final Cut is a sly love letter to the art of filmmaking and a blood-soaked, hilarious genre farce with a meta-to-the-max premise.
Final Cut hits theaters on July 14th, preceded by a run at Tribeca.
