Format: DVD from Harvard Diggins Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.
There are times when the premise of a movie is far better than the actual movie that is produced. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone’s eyes being bigger than their stomach. Coming up with a fun idea or a crazy mashup is easier than actually having that crazy mashup make sense. Versus (Vasasu, which is as close as you can get to “versus” in Japanese) is that film. This is a movie made on a shoestring budget (something like $10,000 in 2000) where it’s clear that the film itself can’t live up to the promise of the idea.
If I told you that this is a movie where the reincarnation of an ancient samurai battles with the Yakuza in a forest where the dead come back to life—including many of the dead that the Yakuza have buried there—you might perk up if you are an action fan or a horror fan. When I add that the head of the Yakuza in the film is actively attempting to open a gate to Hell, and is also a reincarnated figure from the past, you can see that we have something like a story. And then the film plays and lives up to none of it.
Typically, I spend a lot of time going through the plot, at least into the second act, to give an idea of the narrative. Narrative is what I find the most interesting after all, so this is where I focus. The plot of Versus is essentially what I outlined above. A Yakuza boss attempts to open a portal to Hell, and needs a victim who is going to be protected by that reincarnated samurai, who in this incarnation is a criminal. And that’s it.
Everything in this movie, literally everything, is done with a “wouldn’t it be cool” style of filmmaking. It genuinely comes across like a 15-year-old wrote the plot and the dialogue, with all of it intended to “look cool” rather than “be coherent.” Fight sequences go on for 10 minutes at a stretch. Zombies resurrect and suddenly appear out of nowhere. We see a poster shot of a group of fighters and then suddenly they are surrounded by 20 zombies who appear to have materialized out of the ether. This quite literally happens at one point, where one zombie just…drops in from the sky.
Everyone spends the entire film posturing. This is a film where someone’s fighting prowess is perhaps less important than their ability to strike a cool pose and look like an aggro teen would think might look impressive. Versus is a series of cringe TikTok vidoes with the same characters over and over. There’s also a couple of cops (I think?) who show up at one point, since there are Yakuza and escaped prisoners in the area, and they have giant-ass guns and karate skills, so, y’know…more adolescent fantasy moments. Oh, and one of the cops had his hand cut off for some reason, and recently since he has a bloody stump.
Worse, the film doesn’t abide by its own rules. Zombies aren’t killed by a bullet to the head, at least not consistently. Sometimes, they need to be shot over and over. Sometimes, they go down with a kick to the chest. The rule appears to be that zombies die when it looks cool to have them die that way. Everyone whispers for the same reason—because it’s cool when people whisper.
You may notice I haven’t mentioned any character names or any actors. There’s a reason for that. It’s because there’s good guy, sacrificial girl, Yakuza boss, and a then a cluster of bad guys and a bigger cluster of zombies. It doesn’t honestly matter who is doing what or who is playing the role.
Aside from 14-year-old boys who want to see a lot of blood, guns, martial arts, and katanas, the only use of this movie I can think of is as something in the background of a party, with the sound turned off, just to have something playing. There’s a bar/restaurant just outside of St. Louis that I go to when I pet sit my daughter’s dog. They always have a movie projected on a wall for ambience—you can watch, but no subtitles or sound. It’s just there to have something playing. Versus would be great for that.
A number of years ago, I had a student who wanted me to look at the movie script that he’d written. In his mind, this would be a feature-length action movie. The script was about six handwritten pages and it contained about 14 lines of dialogue. He was not overly pleased when I told him that typically, a screenplay is about one minute of film per page of script, and needed actual descriptions of what was happening. In his mind “They fight” would be essentially 20-minute fight scenes. I think he might have seen Versus and used it as inspiration, because boy, does it have the same vibe as what I read all those years ago.
Why to watch Versus: You’re having a party and you want to have a movie on in the background with the sound off just to have something playing.
Why not to watch: It is genuinely incoherent.
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