dowahu If this is considered good for Japanese movies Japan should never make another movie again. This thing sucked more than just about any other movie I have ever seen.It is possible the translations were off a little bit so I will say the English lines were stupid and laughable.The box said that they were time traveling ninja zombies, I have never seen ninjas wear suits and shoot guns but apparently they do.It felt like it was 4 hours long and I kept falling asleep so there is a chance I fell asleep during one or two good parts, but I doubt it, if you liked this movie I am sorry, I am sorry that you have no taste and probably live in your mother's basement and eat paste.

lewiskendell 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.

MBunge If Sam Raimi and gotten drunk when he was 17 and made a movie about Japanese gangsters and zombies, it would have looked a lot like Versus.A couple of escapes from a Japanese prison with "lawbreaker" in English on the front of their prison jumpsuits meet up with a group of Yakuza gangsters in the middle of the forest. T he gangsters are there to pick up the prisoners and help them escape, but insist they wait for another man to arrive. T he prisoners don't care for that, especially one who looks like the boy band version of a badass. Boy Band Badass especially doesn't like it when he finds out the Yakuza have brought a kidnapped girl along with them. They man they're waiting for has plans for her as well, but Boy Band Badass grabs one of the gangsters' guns and demands they let her go. One of the gangsters gets shot dead…and then he comes back to life as a zombie. As Boy Band Badass and the girl flee and the Yakuza pursue, we learn this forest is where the gang has been burying their victims…and they've all come back to life as zombies as well. What follows that is some really crazy stuff as Boy Band Badass fights the Yakuza and they all fight the zombies. Then the man they were all waiting for shows up and we find out this is all some re-enactment of an ancient battle for a dark power of destruction, only this is in modern times and everyone looks like they stepped out of a music video.There is an awful lot of this movie that is laugh out loud goofy. It is never boring, however, and these Japanese filmmakers do know how to film a fight scene. You can actually see what's happening and follow along, rather than the indecipherable blur of jump cuts and microsecond edits that mar most action scenes in American movies. But you can't take anything else in this film at all seriously.If you're high on some illegal or illicit mind-altering substance, you might have a nice trip watching Versus because it's very visually creative. If you'd like something you can bring home and MST3K with your family and friends, Versus might be a nice choice as well. But if you're neither stoned nor snarky, there's not much here to recommend.

Great-Cthulhu As I read Yakuza+Zombies+Magic this movie looked like good fun. Being a fan of good Zombie cinema (and "so bad its good" flicks, too) I though I couldn't go wrong with this one. Sadly, this movie is just lacklustre and drags on and on and then some …Here we have everything united that stands for a cheap Indi flick one would do with his friends in the wood (with just enough cash to get the blood squirting, etc). Versus is the stuff I would make up 20 years ago when playing with my Masters of the Universe or G.I. Joe figures. Most of the villains are from Standart List A of Bad Movies: Evil Villains. We got the stylish evil boss (who is thank god gunned down in under 60 sec.), we have the stylish-but-sadly-totally-mad evil villain (Kenji Matsuda, who act so over the top that he is the only character entertaining enough – sad thing is, after half the movie he is transformed into a stupid frog/ferret/whatnot undead/thing that is just totally ridiculous), and then we have the various henchmen: Seemingly evil rocker with honor and big gun, cool guy with glasses and maybe some gay love interest with the mad boss and the usual moron who goes totally mental from all those supernatural stuff happening around and acts as some kind of comic relief guy. Then – somewhat later – they also throw in a red-haired assassin with shades and the usual one to two female assassins with nice leather dresses and guns. (Look for the second one, she stumbles through the last third of the flick as if the director had forgotten she was still around). Also there is the indifferent "real" evil boss (Hideo Sakaki) who happens to be the second person with some acting talent. To all those more or less archetypal lads & lassies come two cops, who have some serious mental problems (one riding the "studied in the USA with FBI – me hard guy" joke until you wish they'd shot him already).Then we have of course the mysterious and totally cool Mr. Anti-Hero (who happens to suck big time, so you'll hope for the bad guy to kill him) and the even more mysteriously girl in white.All of them thrown into some sort of "story" and lo! let's kill off the zombies in the woods. Not that they are true movie zombies – they can be killed like anybody else. Maybe use some bullets more (which isn't a problem as all guns have at least double the ammo they should have).The whole movie then is, if not a roller-coaster then at least a tunnel of horror to ride, composed of "standing around in pose", "martial arts fighting filmed from various angles and with many cuts to make it look fast", "random running around and fighting" plus the old time evergreen "totally ignoring anything close to storytelling". In animated movies the fight scenes at least look cool. Nah, some of the fighting is cool, indeed – but the whole experience drags on for two hours! I mean, come on guys, without a proper plot and one page of dialogue: You could have done this in half the time. Maybe then it wouldn't have become so stale and boring at it was after one watches, and watches, and watches – and nothing new happens.But, as one can see on this very site, this movie again suffers from overvaluation and undervaluation as do many other movies. For some any damn flick another guy can find shitty is worth 10 stars and is "the best film ever made". The opposite fraction of course will give it 1 star and declare it "the worst film ever made". Man, this movie is just too mediocre. It's neither the orgasmic advent of a new type of movie, but it is neither the greatest bullshit ever filmed. But maybe this is another over-enthusiastic internet thing?If you like martial arts, some guys who happen to be dead but are not real zombies, bad acting, three-minutes posing before every damn fight and are easily distracted by story lines, watch it. Or just grab some beers, get some friends and watch it anyway – maybe you find it cool, maybe you just have a good laugh. I for my part just got bored. Maybe I take my old action figures out and do it again, better