I had a lot of options when it came to picking a movie to close out this year’s festivities. I could have done what I usually do and review a bad movie from this year (Serenity was a front-runner, as were two movies I’ve actually seen, Dark Phoenix and Men in Black: International) but this isn’t just any Shocktober, this is the Decade of Death! In honor of the work we put in this month, I decided I wanted to review a bad movie that represented the darkest, bleakest aspects of the 2010s as a whole. Something so horrible only those who lived through this decade would remember it. So what were the bad directions cinema went in over the past 10 years? Well, there were the unnecessary franchise films, so I could have watched something like Dumb and Dumber To. There was the collapse of theatrical comedies, so I could have watched something like Grown Ups. Then there was “cancel culture” and the backlash to it, so I could have watched something unsavory or truly deplorable but quickly decided that was a bad idea.

One film exists in the crossroads of these terrible trends. A brazen, foolish attempt to simultaneously cash in on the goodwill generated by one decaying franchise and the tiniest opportunity of another. A comedy so painfully unfunny that even watching it on Hulu, I still wanted to find a way to get my money back. A film starring a person who was already creatively burnt out and would go on to reveal himself to be so problematic that I remember hearing an audible groan in the audience when he appeared in another movie just a year after this one. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mortdecai.

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I can’t believe Us came out this year. The film already feels so ingrained in pop culture. It was parodied on SNL and at the MTV Movie Awards (that’s when you know you’ve made it). It’s hard for me to picture a pre-Us world. The film was a hit and an immediate genre classic. Yet I still hear the conversation of “I liked it BUT…” Now it was a lot to ask for Us to live up to the critical and cultural impact of Get Out. Jordan Peele’s debut carried an easier message to decipher. Though I do believe Us sheds light on important issues as well. That being said, if there’s one advantage Us has over Get Out it’s that it’s scarier. Which is a big deal when you’re talking horror.

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One Cut of the Dead begins with a single, unbroken, thirty-minute shot of a crew of filmmakers–making a zombie movie–being attacked by real zombies. It’s impressive from a technical standpoint but the story, characters, effects are nothing to write home about. If you went into this film blind you’d think it was another run-of-the-mill zombie b-movie with nothing new to say about the genre. Make it past that 30 minutes and you’d be wrong. It’s rare that a movie takes such a 360 turn but One Cut of the Dead is special. So much so that if you plan on or are interested in seeing this film I recommend you stop reading right here. This movie has a twist. A big one and I’d hate to spoil the gift that is the last 65 minutes of One Cut of the Dead

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Looking over the scores on our individual scores on Herditary‘s Letterboxd page, it appears I liked it the most out of the Mildly Pleased crew. Contributor Michael Sevigny gave it the lowest score of all of us and went on to say in his Midsommar entry “Ari Aster’s filmmaking is anathema to me.” Harsh, dude. Why is it that our biggest cinephile was coldest on the film, while our least film-savvy writer (me) liked it the most? I could have just asked, but let’s guess instead.

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