Review of Versus (2000) by Daniel P — 29 Apr 2008

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.