Made with a low budget of ¥3 million ($25,000) with a cast of unknown actors, the film opened in Japan in a small theatre for a six-day run.

It grossed US $27,935,711 (¥3.12 billion) in Japan and $30.5 million worldwide, making box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget.

Director Higurashi, desperate for film success due to mounting debts and frustrated at the actors' work, arranges for a blood pentagram to be painted to revive real zombies per the plant's haunted past.

Chinatsu, Ko, and Nao attempt to escape, but Higurashi facilitates an attack by zombified Kasahara while he films.

The actors cast as director and makeup artist could not make filming, forcing Takayuki and his wife Harumi to step in to fill their respective roles.

The camera crane accidentally gets broken, forcing the real cast and crew to form a human pyramid in order to mimic a crane shot for the final shot, with Mao having to hold the camera standing atop Takayuki's shoulders.

The final credits are shown over footage of the real-life filming by the One Cut of the Dead crew, including the faux-crane shot being taken from the top of a stepladder.

[4] For the film, he stated that One Cut of the Dead was partially inspired by Ryoichi Wada's stage play, Ghost in the Box, which Ueda had seen five years prior.

Enbu Seminar not only produced the film, but also hosted the acting workshops that Ueda used to help cast its actors, most of them unknowns.

[7] Producer and Enbu Seminar president Koji Ichihashi said that the initial target for the film to break even was 5,000 admissions.

[4][10] One Cut of the Dead opened in Japan in an 84-seat Tokyo art house theater with an initial theatrical run of six days.

The site's critical consensus states, "Brainy and bloody in equal measure, One Cut of the Dead reanimates the moribund zombie genre with a refreshing blend of formal daring and clever satire.

[19] Writing for Variety, Richard Kuipers declared the film to be a "marvelously inventive horror-comedy [that] breathes new life into the zombie genre", and attributed its success to "its irresistibly bouncy spirit [...] it positively sparkles with the infectious "C'mon everyone, let's put on a show!"

[1] David Ehrlich of IndieWire opined that the film was "so heartfelt and hilarious that it's easy to forgive the contrivances that hold it together, and to overlook how transparently Ueda reverse-engineers most of his best gags.

Seemingly unimportant details in the film's sluggish middle section blossom into killer jokes some 30 minutes later".

[20] In August 2018, Ryoichi Wada gave an interview in which he stated that One Cut of the Dead was an adaptation of Ghost in the Box, and that he was consulting with his legal representatives.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, Ueda decided to create a short film One Cut of the Dead Mission: Remote [31] (カメラを止めるな！リモート大作戦！, Kamera o Tomeru na!

The filmmaker wanted to create something that would lighten the mood during the pandemic, stating, "I started to wonder if there was anything positive I could do to try to put a smile on people’s faces through some light form of entertainment.

[4] In addition, Ueda asked people on social media to upload video of themselves dancing to include in the movie.

[32] A French-language remake titled Final Cut, directed by Michel Hazanavicius and starring Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo, began its production in April 2021.