Versus (2000)

67% of critics liked it
(12 reviews)
77% of users liked it
(18,566 ratings)

Evil Dead 2 meets Street Fighter by way of The Matrix in this wild and woolly zombie/yakuza/samurai/kung fu/splatter flick directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. Throughout the world there are 666 portals to the other side; the 444th is Japan and is called the Forest of Resurrection, where good has battled… More Evil Dead 2 meets Street Fighter by way of The Matrix in this wild and woolly zombie/yakuza/samurai/kung fu/splatter flick directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. Throughout the world there are 666 portals to the other side; the 444th is Japan and is called the Forest of Resurrection, where good has battled evil for time immemorial. The film opens with prisoner KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi) and his fellow cellmate escaping a maximum-security prison and ending up in the forest where they are supposedly to be picked up by a band of gangsters in a shiny Mercedes and taken to a safer place. Instead, the gangsters try to use them and a female hostage (Chieko Misaka) as pawns in a larger power struggle. A gunfight ensues killing KSC2-303's colleague and the mob boss, but just as the standoff is about to yield more violence, an odd thing happens -- the dead get up and attack the living. In the chaos, KSC2-303 and girl disappear into the forest with a band of slickly coifed yakuza in hot pursuit. High-kicks, machine guns, and rampant disembowelments ensue. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 59 min.
Directed By: Ryuhei Kitamura
Genres: Action & Adventure, Horror

On DVD: Jul 29, 2003

Critic Reviews

Janice Page, Boston Globe
A major splatter fest.
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
For a low-budget ghost-yakuza thriller, Versus is a fairly impressive achievement.
Ian Berriman, SFX Magazine
Being dumb is cool, dude, and Versus is as knowingly dumb as a three-chord thrash by The Ramones.
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
[Proves] the old adage about less being more.
Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena
Como trash, tem seus bons momentos (especialmente aqueles protagonizados pelo exagerado - e divertido - Matsuda), mas abusa com sua montagem capenga e a longa duração.
Brian Mckay, eFilmCritic.com
while on many levels it is a poorly written, hammily acted, cheaply produced piece of crap - damn, it's got some good a** kicking!
Michael W. Phillips, Jr., Goatdog's Movies
Mayhem, of a unique, frenetic, and almost crazily poetic kind.
Eric Campos, Film Threat
If you don't have fun watching "Versus" then we're gonna have to break out the paddles on you.

Read all 8 critic reviews

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

Justin Y

Ryuhei Kitamura's style goes a long way, and Versus has plenty of it.The plot is definitely light for a film with nearly a 2 hour run time; however, despite this along with its low budget and lack of multiple settings, the sci-fi fantasy concept, wacky… More
Ryuhei Kitamura's style goes a long way, and Versus has plenty of it.The plot is definitely light for a film with nearly a 2 hour run time; however, despite this along with its low budget and lack of multiple settings, the sci-fi fantasy concept, wacky characters, and stylized action keep things afloat from beginning to end.When all is said and done, the action is the most memorable piece of this picture. Whether it be the plethora of guns, hand to hand combat, or swordplay, it all stands out because of its unique choreography. The lengthy and highly entertaining finale of a fight contains unique swords for both of the leads.Tak Sakaguchi thrives more on his action than acting, but in a film where characters have no names, it all works out. Hideo Sakaki is a confident and effective villain. Minoru Matsumoto and Kenji Matsuda are the over-actors of the bunch and they just barely stay under the level of annoyance.Versus is an action film that can be viewed as a cult classic. Zombies with guns anyone?
Lewis C

Versus aims to be a stylish, cool action flick with a healthy mixture of gore, gun-play, and martial arts. Unfortunately, a lot of those attempts at being stylish and cool, end up coming off as cheesy. All the silly posing and failed attempts at humor don't do a lot to help… More
Versus aims to be a stylish, cool action flick with a healthy mixture of gore, gun-play, and martial arts. Unfortunately, a lot of those attempts at being stylish and cool, end up coming off as cheesy. All the silly posing and failed attempts at humor don't do a lot to help Versus, and neither does the fact that the characters are almost universally annoying and uninteresting. The story is something about zombies and resurrection forests and portals to hell. The word "convoluted" comes to mind. The frequent action scenes could have been the movie's saving grace, but they were uniformly uninspired and routine. The gore wasn't funny or copious enough to warrant any attention. The acting is bad. Not "campy bad" or "hilariously bad", just bad. The kind that's difficult to watch. If you couldn't tell, I thoroughly disliked Versus. I've seen a lot of great Japanese action flicks. This wasn't one of them.
Dean M

Bullets, blades and blood fly in every direction with Hellenic zeal in the kung-fu-meets-zombie movie that is Versus. Before you can say Dawn of the Dead, zombies are stumbling all over the place, and to make matters worse an ancient ninja-demon… More
Bullets, blades and blood fly in every direction with Hellenic zeal in the kung-fu-meets-zombie movie that is Versus. Before you can say Dawn of the Dead, zombies are stumbling all over the place, and to make matters worse an ancient ninja-demon with a score to settle gets in on the action as well. A relentless barrage of Splatstick ensues in this spirited but ultimately thin homage to the cinema of Sam Raimi, George Romero and John Carpenter - Japanese style.
Wahida K

A Forest to Hell comes Alive with Death.
Cassandra M

The contribution that Japan has made to the world of screen violence can hardly be overstated, and in the 21st Century there seems to be a new renaissance of sheer bloodiness. Movies like BATTLE ROYALE, ICHI THE KILLER and VERSUS really set new standards for out and out shocking… More
The contribution that Japan has made to the world of screen violence can hardly be overstated, and in the 21st Century there seems to be a new renaissance of sheer bloodiness. Movies like BATTLE ROYALE, ICHI THE KILLER and VERSUS really set new standards for out and out shocking violence that I don't think any other country in the world has matched. VERSUS is basically all about action. The premise is a crazy one that involves kung-fu samurais re-incarnated as yakuza who then get turned into zombies and vampires. It's actually a very interesting and quite complex story in its own right, but basically it's an excuse to get a bunch of people in a forest and stage a fairly continuous sequence of hand to hand fights, sword fights and gun fights - with a supernatural angle to justify some HK style OTT acrobatics and an undead angle to justify people getting seriously messed up and still fighting on. Genius. Sick as all hell, but genius! These days, good action movies from Hong Kong are becoming increasingly rare. For years HK stood unchallenged and exported its unique cinematic arts throughout Asia. Since the talent or the investment or the will or whatever seems to have fled the HK industry in recent years, it seems like other Asian countries are stepping up to the challenge of filling the gap. Korea has produced movies like MUSA and MY WIFE IS A GANGSTER, Thailand has produced BANGKOK DANGEROUS and TAK 4, INDIA has produced AANKHEN and MISSION KASHMIR. Hollywood and Europe have had a go too, but with so little success overall it's hardly worth mentioning. VERSUS is clearly made by a small independant team who recognised that Hong Kong isn't going to produce the next jaw-dropping action movie any time soon, and who believed they had what it took to do it instead. It takes a lot of confidence and dedication to produce results like these on a clearly low budget, and Napalm Films must have had a lot of both. VERSUS attempts practically every type of action scene that Hong Kong has been famous for (and Japan traditionally has not), and pulls most of them off very well. There'd been such a lot of hype around VERSUS on the net for ages that I'd found myself instinctively hating it before I knew anything about it, but when I saw the trailer I was converted to enthusiasm. Seeing the wild disparity between the cool SHIRAYUKI HIME trailer and the dreadful full length movie gave me some trepidation about VERSUS, which is probably a good thing since at least I wasn't expecting something flawless. VERSUS is not flawless, but it's much much better than SHIRAYUKI HIME. The action scenes are not better than Hong Kong's best - they're not even nearly as good as some of the scenes in movies like MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS in fact, but they're imaginatively and enthusiastically staged and filmed. And violent! Oh so very very violent! The special effects are some of the most convincingly brutal I've seen. ICHI THE KILLER may have had more outrageous effects, but was never in danger of having convincing effects. BATTLE ROYALE may have had more realistic violence, but nothing like the sheer magnitude of the bodily damage people take in VERSUS! People get cut in half, lose limbs, have gaping holes blown through them... well, you know how much it takes to stop a zombie moving . It's all played fairly non-seriously, but not to the cartoonish extent of ICHI. It looks pretty damn real. Definitely not one for the squeamish, really not a family movie. But for the sick puppies out there who maintain an innocent curiosity as to just how violent a movie can be (like myself, I admit), VERSUS is definitely a must-see!
xGary X

A group of gangsters kidnap a girl and meet a pair of escaped convicts in the woods awaiting their boss for instructions. Little do they know that he's an unkillable demon who can re-animate the corpses of their dead victims...Well if that synopsis sounds ridiculous, it gets… More
A group of gangsters kidnap a girl and meet a pair of escaped convicts in the woods awaiting their boss for instructions. Little do they know that he's an unkillable demon who can re-animate the corpses of their dead victims...Well if that synopsis sounds ridiculous, it gets sillier than that! This is the kind of film where if it were done straight-faced, it probably would've been a disaster. Fortunately it has just the right amount of tongue in cheek humour to make it great fun. It has the same kind of mix of gore and laughs that the likes of A Chinese Ghost Story contains, and as a result comes across as a kind of Asian martial arts version of Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. Like those films, the budget was obviously tight, so you can spot some wires and there are a couple of ropey effects, but it's all part of the fun. Laugh at it or with it, it's an a musing bag of manga style lunacy and frenetic action that's basically just an excuse for constant fist fights, gun battles and samurai swords splattered with a liberal dose of gore. Unpretentious crowd pleasing nonsense.
El Hombre I

Action that will leave you dizzy along with good production are the main attractions to this mixed bag of zombies, martial-arts, guns, and gore. You don't actually care about the characters who are so poorly written because you are just bewildered by some amazing fight… More
Action that will leave you dizzy along with good production are the main attractions to this mixed bag of zombies, martial-arts, guns, and gore. You don't actually care about the characters who are so poorly written because you are just bewildered by some amazing fight choreography and graphic gore. People fly through the air, kicking and chopping at everything they can or blasting everything that moves to pieces leaving blood, guts, spit and ass all over the woods. The only thing that stops the rating from being higher is the attempt to cram a plot in where it doesn't belong. Although some might get tired of this attempt and switch off after 60 minutes, it's still a fun mix of horror, humor and good old teeth breaking carnage <a href="http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/?action=view¤t=versus.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/versus.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
Tsubaki S

I was expecting a bit more from this one, Kitamura has some creative camera ideas but needs to get over the fact that he didn't directed "The Matrix" films. The film stretches way longer than it should, with long pauses of the two leads just standing around trying to… More
I was expecting a bit more from this one, Kitamura has some creative camera ideas but needs to get over the fact that he didn't directed "The Matrix" films. The film stretches way longer than it should, with long pauses of the two leads just standing around trying to look cool. Not really worth all the cult following that it got.
EightThirty .

Versus is like a Movie Version of Devil May Cry ^_^n NICE!!!
Dean !

Really didn't live up to the hype. I was hoping for some wow factor in the film to show how the East does an action/horror film with lots of martial arts. This is all very low budget effects and the story isn't great at all. At the end I couldn't wait for the finish,… More
Really didn't live up to the hype. I was hoping for some wow factor in the film to show how the East does an action/horror film with lots of martial arts. This is all very low budget effects and the story isn't great at all. At the end I couldn't wait for the finish, dragged out to nearly 2 hours!
Steve B

I was with it, then it lost me, then I was with it again, but then it shook me off, and then I picked back up, but the ending made me realize I was never on board to begin with. I wanted to like it, but the movie made it impossible.
vieras e

Mindless bloodshed, zombies, bizarre Asian gangsters - what more could you want?
Lesley N

One hour fifty nine minutes of gunfight and stabbing as lots of zombies and gangsters kill each other in a forest. With a bit of history thrown in.
Duncan R

Another action movie with a capital A, and a pretty fun one at that. It doesn't just stop at intense gunplay and balletic wire-fu, either. There's some pretty nifty bladework as well. The cast is pretty good overall, despite the occasional overblown performance. The movie… More
Another action movie with a capital A, and a pretty fun one at that. It doesn't just stop at intense gunplay and balletic wire-fu, either. There's some pretty nifty bladework as well. The cast is pretty good overall, despite the occasional overblown performance. The movie has its share of flaws, sure; The main story doesn't really make sense until we get exposition in the form of a monologue by the movie's villain, the subplots involving the comic relief characters don't really go anywhere, and there's the occasional inconsistent editing here and there (wow, he changed out of his prison overalls and into that kick-ass leather trenchcoat in the blink of an eye!). But, much like Wanted, this is a movie where it's okay if style trumps substance. And boy, does it have style!
Daniel P

Deep in one of the forests of Japan, portal 444 of 666 exists, the portal to the 'other side'. In this place, the dead come back to life. Or something. Basically, it's another Zombie movie, and honestly the plot is best completely ignored/glossed over in this one (in… More
Deep in one of the forests of Japan, portal 444 of 666 exists, the portal to the 'other side'. In this place, the dead come back to life. Or something. Basically, it's another Zombie movie, and honestly the plot is best completely ignored/glossed over in this one (in fact the film starts to come off the tracks whenever it takes itself seriously - thankfully not often). Best seen as a show-off of inventive blood and gore effects and witty deaths, as well as cool Evil Dead style 'camera on stick' fancy tricks, there's much to enjoy here before it outstays its welcome. Which it inevitably does, about an hour and 10 minutes in. As soon as the exposition starts coming and the film just tries to give Tak Sakaguchi and Hideo Sakaki excuses to look vaguely cool-ish, tedium gradually increases until the penultimate showdown, which is very satisfying indeed. For some reason though, there's also tagged on a horribly cheap looking, and - I'm presuming - unintentionally hilarious far-future scene; hopefully not a foundation for a future-bound sequel. Performances are over the top but not un-enjoyably so, aside from a truly *awful* Chieko Misaki, and much of Versus is pretty good times.
Curt C

It's cheesy and hokey in all the right ways, the story is surprisingly good, and the ending is fantastic.
Doctor S

I remember starting to watch this and gave up as it became abundantly clear the director had no interest whatsoever in substance. I'm for some empty-headed action but against brain-dead attempts.
John M

What a non sense and repetitive mess!!! I just could stand to watch an hour and stop it because I got saturated watching the same fight sequences over and over again and the worst it was not niether funny. Versuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Marcus W

I'll give kudos for effort and trying something different, but there's so much going on and so many genres thrown in that it actually starts to get lost as it makes things up as it goes along. If they had stuck to just the gangsters and the zombies, it could have been great,… More
I'll give kudos for effort and trying something different, but there's so much going on and so many genres thrown in that it actually starts to get lost as it makes things up as it goes along. If they had stuck to just the gangsters and the zombies, it could have been great, but sadly it becomes an effort to watch. Not to mention the fact that there are no likeable characters (or particularly good actors) - least of all the "hero" who is just arrogant and irritating.
Juny L

Versus has it slow start but once the action starts is just a bloody mayhem with great action sequences & lots of gore.Also zombies rises up from the ground for the showdown.The story has elements of horror & fantasy besides is an action film with humor.Is an entertaining… More
Versus has it slow start but once the action starts is just a bloody mayhem with great action sequences & lots of gore.Also zombies rises up from the ground for the showdown.The story has elements of horror & fantasy besides is an action film with humor.Is an entertaining & well done film. <a href="http://s247.photobucket.com/albums/gg153/cynful4ever/?action=view&current=versus.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg153/cynful4ever/versus.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Read all 20 featured audience ratings

Cast

Kenji Matsuda