Japanese zombies are different. They’re faster, smarter and more vengeful than their western counterparts, and less interested in brains. They also have a habit of popping up at the 444th portal to the other side — the forest of resurrection.
In pre-credits times, a samurai battled zombies here but now it’s just another isolated forest at which escaped convicts meet up with over-acting gangsters who insist that everyone wait for an unnamed leader.
Tempers flare, guns are drawn, and the inevitable ensues.
Versus is all style and very little substance. But the style, consisting of one fight scene after another, is incredible. In any other film any one of these gun battles, knife fights, sword fights, and more would stand out; in Versus, we get two hours of highly stylised extreme violence.
Versus is 100% entertainment, casually throwing together a stack of action and zombie tropes into a plot that does little more than get us from one stunning set-piece to the next. It really is a testament to director Ryûhei Kitamura’s sense of pacing that it all holds together so well.
Versus is sometimes tense, often silly and always worth watching.
Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill 
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