• Wide Release
• Director: Ryûhei Kitamura
• Written by: Ryûhei Kitamura , Yûdai Yamaguchi
• Running Time: 119 minutes
• Language: Japanese
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: Tak Sakaguchi, Hideo Sakaki, Kenji Matsuda, Chieko Misaka

Man I just can't get enough of those Asian Zombie flicks!!! I'm hard pressed to think of an Asian Zombie movie that I didn't like. Unlike their Western counter-parts, which are mostly derivative of the Romero films, Asian Zombie movies always seem to bring something new to the table. I think it must be written in the Bushido Code that one does not make a zombie movie unless one has a new or innovative idea.

Another selling point of most Asian Zombie flicks, as well as many other genre of Asian Cinema, is the very cool action element, and this movie VERSUS is no exception. VERSUS is a veritable non-stop thrill ride of action. Zombie movies don't get much more action-packed than this, with the possible exception of WILD ZERO, of course. VERSUS may not be quite cool as WILD ZERO, but it comes a close, a very close, second. In fact, perhaps if it included Guitar Wolf, it might have even topped Wild Zero. Unlike WILD ZERO though, this movie is much more serious in it's mood and atmosphere.

Instead of Rock 'n' Roll, this one has some really cool kung-fu and extreme violence. It reminded me a lot of SHOGUN ASSASSIN with the blood sprays and severed bodies and the comic book style to it. It's cool to watch a swordsman swathe through a crowd of people (or in this case zombies) hacking and slashing, then stop, leaving the group standing frozen for that one second before they all simultaneously fall to the ground. And torrential arterial sprays are full on! Plus there is mucho gun-play also done very cool-like with lots of posing, two-handed shooting, cool camera tricks and angles, and slow motion and all the cool stuff that makes the action stand out...and the choice of guns was making me drool! Check out the muzzle-break on that .50 cal Barrett M-82 in the pic below...

But does it have a plot, you may well ask?
Well try this one on for size. It seems there are 666 portals that connect this world to the other side. These are concealed from all human beings. Somewhere in Japan exists the 444th portal.... The forest of resurrection. Or so the blurb at the begining tells us. We then see this samuri dude cut up a bunch of zombies before being cut in half by this other evil looking Samuri dude.

We cut ahead to the present day when a couple of escaped convicts are meeting a group of gangsters in this same forest. The gangsters have kidnapped a girl and brought her along and when they meet up with the convicts, they inform them they must all wait for the boss. The convicts don't want to wait around, naturally enough since they are wanted men. An arguement errupts and one of the gangsters is killed. A standoff between the convicts and gangsters is short-lived as the dead gangster comes back to life and attacks. One convict is killed and the other, the apparent hero of the story, grabs the girl and escapes. The gangsters go after them but it dawns on them that they have buried a lot of bodies around these woods in the course of their gangstering careers. Soon there are Zombies galour.

From here on the storyline gets quite convoluted. But fear not, for the action makes up for it. Seems our hero convict is the re-incarnation of the samuri that was cut in half at the begining (but he doesn't remember it) and the Big Boss of the gangsters was the guy that cut him in half and the girl figures in it somehow and they do this battle every few hundred years for some reason that I can only guess at. I keep meaning to pay more attention and figure it out each time I watch this, but I always get caught up in the action!
Without giving anything away, the ending is kind of open-ended and just begging for a sequel. Interestingly enough, Ryûhei Kitamura the writer/director, prior to making this, actually made a sort of prequel called DOWN TO HELL. Much in the same way as Sam Raimi made WITHIN THE WOODS before making EVIL DEAD, Ryûhei Kitamura made DOWN TO HELL, a 47 min scaled down version of VERSUS, to test the waters and have something to show investors.
So where do I get such a cool movie you ask? Well here is my story. As soon as I heard about this flick, I took a serious look about for it and end up with a VCD version. This was back in 2003. Then a DVD finally came out almost a year later and so I rented it. Then I scratched my head. Stuff was missing! I checked out the situation and found out that there were two versions of the DVD released. So I ended up buying a Uncut Unrated version. The one I rented was a cut R-rated version. The dilemma is that it is hard to tell which version you are getting unless you have seen both. The R-rated version is fully cool, but if you get the unrated version you see what it looks like to get shot with a .50 round from a Barret (of course you could look on Youtube and see it for real from our good troups in Iraq, but the VERSUS version is pretty close). The trick is, if you see an MPAA R-rating on the packaging, don't buy it unless you ask and they have no other version. But since then there are two even better versions released on DVD, so I suggest you get either one of them.
The first is the Director's Cut. I'm not sure what the extra minute or so contain that is not in the Unrated Version but the DVD is packed with extras. And if you want to spend a few bucks, there is an Ultimate version running about $45CAN which is a full 10 minutes longer with DVD extras galore and some extra short side-story films "Nervous 1" and "Nervous 2" much like the ones on the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake DVD. There is definately a sequel to be made! Unfortunately it seems Ryûhei Kitamura may have sold out and instead opted do do instead an 'Americanized' version, much like the RING or GRUDGE did. But then again, if an American version is half as sucessful as the original, he'll have ca$h appenty to make the coolest sequel....