10 Horror Movies That Weren't What Anyone Expected
6. One Cut of the Dead
The marketing team behind Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead had the unenviable task of trying to sell the film to audiences without giving away its big glorious surprise. And so, the picture was marketed as a horror-comedy about a film crew making a low-budget zombie offering who are, in fact, attacked by real zombies during the shoot.
But actually, at the end of this 37-minute single-take opening, we pull back and see that this is really a film within another horror film called One Cut of the Dead.
The final section of the movie revisits the chaotic 37-minute opening from a behind-the-scenes perspective, revealing how all of the apparent filmmaking "mistakes" came to be, revealing them all to be an intentional part of the film-within-a-film-within-a-film that is the real One Cut of the Dead.
Does your head hurt yet?
It's frankly one of the most ingenious and mind-bogglingly clever horror movies of the past decade, and one that just about nobody saw coming.