The Way of the Samurai

Yoroi: Samurai Zombie
Dir. Tak Sakaguchi
2008
A spiritual, if not exactly literal, sequel to the almighty Versus, Yoroi finds that film’s star, Tak Sakaguchi, hovering behind the camera to direct a script by Ryuhei Kitamura that once again delves into the themes of reincarnation and revenge, the ambiguity between good and evil, the violence endemic to certain locations and human sacrifice. Oh and zombies. Lots and lots of really pissed off zombies… that happen to be undead, angry samurai.
Unlike Hollywood, which feels the need to cater to the stupidest among us by explaining every detail to (un)death, Samurai Zombie doesn’t bother naming its characters or delving into detailed backstories. Instead, it just hints and teases what brought the nuclear family of four, a pair of gun toting criminal lovers, a murderous psychopath and a pair of bored cops to the fenced off, abandoned town shrouded in evil. But in the haunted burial ground of samurai murdered centuries before, they will meet their bloody fate in a way that suggests a connection between them that spans several lifetimes.

Zombology: The zombie hordes are unleashed by the family father whose wife and children are being held captive by the criminals after they were carjacked on a country drive. Stranded in the wilderness by a flat tire, the criminals force the father to go find help, warning him the living dead are walking the woods (how they came by that valuable sliver of information, we never find out). Wandering into the samurai burial ground while looking for help, the father inexplicably slashes his own throat, begging the undead warriors to protect his family. Turns out, the samurai zombies have a whole ’nother agenda and nobody – not even children – will be exempt from their murderous wrath. This is a film where anyone can die at any time and the traditional horror film rules of survival are bloodily violated.

Yoroi succeeds by making the most of a limited budget to tell a compelling story amid the geysers of corpuscles and Evil Dead style slapstick. It manages to add depth and humanity to even the most repulsive of its characters and tacks on a flashback twist ending that will force you to reassess just who were the protagonists who were the villains. While it’s not as kinetic and exuberant as Versus, Yoroi is quietly compelling in its own way. It walks away with an exemplary 3 percent on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of shit.

The Satanic Versus

Versus
Ryuhei Kitamura
2000
Not even I can stomach sitting through shitty zombie movies week in and week out for your amusement, so it is with much pleasure I know turn my loving attention to Ryuhei Kitamura’s low budget masterpiece Versus. If all you know of Kitamura is his muddled take on The Midnight Meat Train, first, I apologize for the two hours of your life you’ll never get back, and second, hie thee until thine local movie emporium or foreign flick kiosk in ye olde shopping mall to snatch up this convoluted good-versus-evil gem which proves boundless exuberance, some clever filmmaking and a bevy of sly conspirators can turn out a film that runs circles around most bloated Hollywood extravaganzas.
Versus posits there are 666 portals to the netherworld scattered throughout the universe, which those with the mystical know-how can exploit for world dominating powers if someone from the right bloodline is sacrificed. Echoing Japan’s infamous suicide forest of Aokigahara, portal number 444 just happens to be where the unnamed protagonist (martial artist, actor and director Tak Sakaguchi), an escaped convict, and his chain gang friend meet up with local yakuza for reasons that are never really explained and would only get in the way of the over-caffeinated imbroglio that ensues.
Versus is the ultimate blend of kung fu, gun fu, sword fu, yakuza fu, zombie fu and bad one liner fu set to a cheez-metal soundtrack, Matrix mocking attire and an irrepressible sense of fun. The plot is almost negligible (including a subplot about a hilariously boastful cop and his partner looking for the escapees that goes absolutely nowhere) but that’s hardly a criticism.

Zombology: In addition to being a portal to the netherworld, the forest, known as the Forest of Resurrection, is also a zombie-haunted landscape where the dead come shambling back to life. While we certainly get a bellyful of traditional zombies, the dead yakuza (who get mowed down in the first 10 minutes) also return from the grave as super-spry mystical zombie-fu warriors who get all chop-socky on our trenchcoated hero.

Standing the notions of good versus evil on its head, Versus manages to slyly to tie together an opening flashback sequence and a flash forward ending in a way that makes you rethink everything that happens in the film, subverting our notions of protagonist and antagonist in the process. This is a film that is an absolute 0 on the Hell of the Living Dead scale of suckitude. In fact, to even mention that wretched pile of festering crap in the same paragraph is an insult of Kitamura’s technical and narrative mastery. Versus is an unabashedly enjoyable film that knows exactly what it wants to be and hits every grace note with panache.