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Old 09-02-2013, 05:45 PM
Haifisch Haifisch is offline
Hellraiser
 
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Versus

As I mentioned in my introduction thread, I've written a few horror reviews which I'll be posting here. This is my most recent, and I thought I'd go ahead and share it first. I hope you enjoy it.

Versus is a Japanese film with subtitles, but even if you’re the type who doesn’t like subtitles the DVD does have an English-speaking dubbed track. If you’re like me and you prefer to watch foreign films in their original language, however, you might get pissed off if you’re a grammar Nazi, because there are a few spelling errors here. This was a bit of a distraction at first, but after a while I stopped caring about it. It was still a hundred times more coherent than some online comments I’ve read.
After a brief introduction, the movie opens up with an escaped convict running from the law through a place known as The Forest of Resurrection. This guy doesn’t seem to have a name, so I’ll just call him Bill. He runs into some evil men in suits who have been sent to pick him up, and gets into a little argument that leads to him murdering one of the suits. And after he kills someone within The Forest of Resurrection, he finds himself in a deeper world of shit than he anticipated.
Versus isn’t just a straight horror film. It’s also a really fun action movie, and it isn’t afraid of overstepping the boundaries of realism. There are people getting thrown against trees, characters striking dramatic poses, and bad guys laughing maniacally. If you want to see a movie that you can take seriously, look elsewhere. There’s one particular suit who acts like he’s hopped up on drugs the whole time, and he’s my favorite character in the entire movie. There’s a part where he and two other guys are getting ready to take on about a dozen zombies, and as he's poised and ready for battle he's licking his lips and grinning like a maniac. And he has a gun, but he ends up dropping it in favor of a little switchblade knife. Because cocaine is a hell of a drug.
The suits and zombies aren’t the only antagonists, either. Just to make things more interesting, there are also two insane cops looking for Bill, as well as a mysterious 500+ year old man with a personal grudge to settle. It may sound complicated and a little overambitious, but the characters are juggled with skill, and it never feels like the plot is needlessly dragging on.
As the film progresses, the story gets a lot weirder, and it even gets a little darker, which I did not see coming. To my pleasant surprise, the drama kind of works here. It usually bothers me when these nutty B movies attempt to be more serious than they really should be, but in this case I didn‘t mind it. It raised the hairs on my arm a few more times than I expected.
There’s nothing much else for me to say about this movie except that I really loved it. If you’re a fan of zombies and mayhem, and if you’re into pulp action films like Blade or Desperado, you might want to give this a go.
8/10
Oh, and here’s a fun fact. Ryuhei Kitamura, the director, went on to America to make The Midnight Meat Train and No One Lives.
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action, japan, ryuhei kitamura, versus, zombie

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