Great Zombie Flick!
It's hard to describe VERSUS in a matter of Hollywood (or American) terms: think of it as Sam Peckingpah directing THE EVIL DEAD meets CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON starring a virile Bruce Lee -- in place of the legendary Bruce Campbell -- but re-envisioning the story with mythologic, Biblical, punk, and gangster overtones.
Once the viewer figures out what's going on, the film plays out its light wonderful, high spirited, blood-filled camp: three souls, all quasi-immortal, continue to meet reincarnated versions of themselves for combat-bloody-combat within the Forest of Resurrection, only one of 666 Portals on the Temporal Plane located on the planet Earth. Inside the Forrest, no one can die without facing re-invigoration as a gun-toting, sword-swinging zombie ... except for our three nameless principles who can't seem to avoid running into one another. (For all its foibles, "zombiehood" never looked so aerobic.)

VERSUS is filled with dazzling camerawork, and Director Ryuhei Kitamura achieves great mileage out of quick shots of incredibly energetic gun and swordplay. The make-up work is exemplary; when comical, it's comical, and when serious, it's serious. The actors are all very much at ease in what seems consistently to be moments of utter absurdity ... but, rest assured, it all makes sense in its own sort of violent, cosmic way.

Ultimately, the story is far more about the pursuit of inevitability than it is anything else. To search for greater meaning in a film filled with comic moments so bloody that you cringe is pure folly. Regardless, Kitamura does an admirable job keeping the action at a frenetic pace once all Hell breaks loose, and it doesn't let up until the epic conclusion ... followed by one epic epilogue that still keeps the viewer guessing.

Possibly dismissing as little more than just kung-fu fighting immortals of death, VERSUS presents a complex woven series of events that seemingly -- for all intents and purposes -- must play out again every 99 years (or so) within the Forrest of Resurrection in order for humankind -- or, at least, the lives of these nameless characters -- to maintain a meaningful balance.

VERSUS is great flick for budding film students, Asian film buffs, or midnight matinees.

THE VIDEO QUALITY: It's the reason for the four stars and not five. It's not completely distasteful, but it appears as it a fifth-generation video copy. At times early in the film, the images are extraordinarily grainy (ala THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), and, while they do improve at times during the final third of the film, ultimately they never rise to the level of a respectable digital transfer.