Poll Position: Versus (2000)

Last week's poll was won by the often panned yet somehow cult favorite Versus. Looking up reviews for this movie, you'll find quite a few positive opinions on it and I actually found it on a list of best martial arts movies when looking up possible candidates for the poll. Almost everyone I know, however, has told me this is one of the worst movies they've ever seen. It doesn't really have a story, just that in a particular forest people come back to life, and a bad guy is trying to make a sacrifice to open the portal to the afterlife and receive it's dark power. So did I end up hating Versus or finding the underlying cult charm? Hit the jump to find out!


Versus is clearly a movie that had little to no budget at all. All the effects are done practically (not always a bad thing), the entire film takes place in one location, and not a single one of the actors can actually act. The one thing it has going for it is that some of the fight scenes (and there are a lot) are actually choreographed fairly well, although much of it is then spoiled by terrible camera work and poor editing.

I can't get into much detail about the characters. None, I repeat, NONE of characters have a name. Not a single name is ever mentioned during the movie, and even on the IMDB page, the roles are listed as "The Man" and "The Girl" and others by what they were wearing or their job such as "Yakuza with glasses."

This is the 'hero'. Like everyone else, he has no name.

 There's a high paced frenetic action to all the fight scenes at least. Unfortunately most of this is due to the camera constantly moving. Either in the ever popular "shaky cam" style or the "spin around the characters while they do something not so exciting to make it more exciting" style. There's also a LOT of extreme close ups at people staring off into the distance, trying to look cool, but actually looking like they're having a bout of amnesia. And I don't blame them, I'd want to forget I was ever in this movie too.

While the effects were all practical, they were often inconsistent and sloppily done. Characters get blood sprayed on them or even splashed on them, but in later scenes it's not that it's a little different, it might be absent or entirely in a different place on their body. Fake wounds are visibly plastic stuck to faces and wires are often visible when the wire work is done. There's even a flashback scene in which a close up on the girl's face clearly shows a fake pasted on hairline.

The gore effects are often laughable at best

This movie makes D-War look amazing by comparison. Not since Plan 9 From Outer Space have I witnessed scenes that jump back and forth with the time of day from shot to shot. Half of this movie was clearly filmed on an overcast cloudy day, another quarter of it was shot on a sunny morning, and the final quarter was in the afternoon of that sunny day. There's a scene in this movie that goes from extreme close up of the lead female to extreme close up of the lead male while they have a conversation. The guy is in an overcast scene, but it's a nice sunny day for the girl. There's even a scene in which the 'hero' shows up at the end and the camera sweeps up to him from a low angle with the sun shining behind him, then a weird edit happens and he's standing there on the overcast day. Only Plan 9 topped this with the scene flip flopping from day to night and back again.

If you want to see a man flip his long black leather coat around for two hours, this is the movie for you! Even the semi competent fight scenes don't make up for the terrible pacing, absent story, hollow empty characters, bad acting, horrendous camera work and crap editing. Even the musical score is just one of the many auto drum beats you can play on any standard electric keyboard. I could probably just keep going on complaining about this movie but I think this is enough. This is, without a doubt, the worst movie I've seen in a long, long time.