Excellent, a Must See

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Blistering performances.

Some guys out filming in the woods with a camera and added zombies…no, it's not the latest in a long line of BLAIR WITCH derivatives, but instead another low-budget Japanese slice of mayhem that follows in the same undead vein as WILD ZERO and JUNK. VERSUS takes the flesh-eating dead from the Romero movies and transplants them slap-bang into the middle of a tale involving yakuza vendettas, escaped convicts and an age-old sorcerer with plans for immortality. If it sounds overbaked and half-crazy, that's because it is.I really like these low-budget Japanese movies as they have a tendency to overcome their budgetary constraints, making up for a lack of cash with an influx of creative energy. The last one I watched was a glorious Tarantino rip-off called SCORE. VERSUS follows the same formula, dishing up some familiar ingredients and giving them extra jolts of vitality which brings a storyline you might have seen before back to outrageous (un)life.The characters are crazed, larger than life creations and the actors go way above and beyond the call of duty in their roles, but somehow the over-the-top nature of the performances work. Ryuhei Kitamura keeps his cameras moving all over the place, creating novel shot after novel shot, and the (many) action sequences are elaborately staged and completely exhilarating. It's a real shame when you watch a movie with a budget hundreds of times larger than the one here making crucial mistakes, like dodgy shaky-cam scenes or fights that are just plain dull. VERSUS may be silly, cheesy and rough around the edges…but it's never dull!

I have seen a lot of martial arts movies and I am willing to put up with a certain lack of dialogue, bad acting, and poor plot but this movie is ridiculous.When I read that this movie has zombies, hand-to-hand combat, sword fighting and guns I thought to myself how could you screw up a movie like that. Well Versus does just that.The fighting is bad. The scenes are very choppy and it looks more like an American action fighting sequence then what I've come to expect from an Asian fighting sequence. Not only that, but the fight sequences had poor sound and visual effects. I get that this movie is suppose to be like an anime, but even then this would be a poor anime film. The shooting scenes are just as bad. It looked like the characters have never fired a gun in their life.The acting is just as bad. Again, since this is an action fighting movie I don't expect great acting but wow this was bad. To be fair, the lead character was okay, but everyone else looked as dangerous as Napoleon Dynamite. It is not believable to have 120 lbs nerds pretend to look badass. The dialogue was by far the worst. I watched the subtitled version and it seemed like the dialogue was written at a grade 1 level and was delivered at a level lower.I'm not even sure how to comment on the plot. It's easy to follow, but is just horrible. I think they were going for a Highlander movie plot, but if Highlander Endgame gets a 4.4/10 then this movie should be below that. By the end of the movie you really don't care what happens, which favours the ending because it barley makes sense; but by that point in the movie you are so tired of watching it you find yourself saying "sure I guess that makes sense, just please end now." Overall, I would not watch this movie again. In fact, I regret watching it in its entirety once. I don't know why it is rated so high, but this is by far the most overrated movie I have ever seen to date. I have seen independent films with a cast of nobody's and very low budgets produce decent movies so there so that is no excuse for this movie at all.

Let me start by saying that this is the craziest action movie I have ever seen. I don't mean crazy in the sense it has crazy action scenes (it has), or crazy characters (it has..) or a crazy story (it does have...), I mean crazy on the freaking whole, the whole movie is crazy and has a crazy concept, and that is what made it interested and entertaining for me.So basically a group of convicts escapes into a forest to rendezvous with another group of gangstas, the thing goes wrong, there's a double cross, a gunfight... the usual. However, that forest happens to be one of the 666 portals to the other world. I know right? So what does this mean? That the guys who are gonna get killed... aren't really going to die! This gives a whole new meaning to the idea that people die if they are killed.And this brings us to the best shoot-out action and sword fights of zombies versus yakuzas you will ever seen! Well, then there's something about this guy trying to figure out what the hell is going on, rescuing a kidnapped girl, being the chosen one and fighting the forces of evil... at the same time. It's one hell of a complex plot in a plot less movie... What?? This movie is incredibly gory, funny and fast-paced. It IS action-oriented, but it's so much more! It's also a very crazy film if I haven't mentioned it yet and if it's going to do anything to you other than tell you in your face "it's all about the fun" is to entertain you for 2 hours or so.If you like some new and crazy ideas for a not-stop hilarious and action ride, watch this movie with the thought that it's going to be very, very special.

A lot of things have been said about this movie, and this combined with the premise of a zombie/yakuza/samurai theme had me very intrigued. I'm a sucker for those sorts of things you see, and you could probably imagine my glee with the blending of them all into a single package. Of course, I was by no means expecting anything thought provoking, neither was I expecting to be emotively moved, or anything really that could remotely get me to think. This is something I instead consider as 'leave your brain at the door' cinema, where the fundamental principle is not to encourage thinking but just to mindlessly entertain. However saying that I felt disappointed afterwards; It seems after all its hype; the movie with such a potentially great concept just couldn't pull it off, and in the end failed in its one and only objective. Versus is sadly a rather tedious movie that at times even borders on boring.There is no plot worth speaking of, and dialogue as you would expect is as a result rather lack-lustre. Cinematography is mundane and the characters two dimensional. Even the score is nothing worth writing about. What we have instead is a serious of fighting show pieces. Each in close succession. The plot is around only to try and add an degree of meaning to the various clashes, and subsequently falls flat on it's face. The plot simply put is confusing; with the various forces switching sides/gaining powers or even introducing new characters/ concepts on a whim. Thus the film is reliant upon the quality of its actions scenes more than anything else, and even these are nothing spectacular. The brief respite is that the blood and guts are very exaggerated, and this gives it an element of (intended?) comic relief. The movie however with very little variation from its 'FIGHT-talk a little-FIGHT-do something else-FIGHT' formula, gets a little tedious as you would imagine after a bit. Only a rather belated plot (I was wondering where that went) twist towards the film's end gives the starving viewer a small morsel of entertainment on which to nibble on. But the majority of us at this point would be to numb or confused to enjoy it.