Last time i've seen this it must've been sometime in the early 2000s when i was just starting to delve deeper into japanese film, not yet aware of what countless treasures lay beneath the surface-level wave of v-cinema titles, j-horror as well as blood- and gore filled "japansploitation" titles clearly aimed at the international home video market, giving a very skewed or at the very least one-sided impression of what japanese cinema is all about. *Versus* must have been a considerable contributing factor to all that, viewed in retrospect. Back then, i was impressed by this low-budget independent action flick which felt kinda like an "Evil Dead" of japanese action cinema. In hindsight though, without the rose-tinted glasses of young adulthood, i gotta say that not only does this film have huge problems, but also that director Ryuhei Kitamura had already kinda peaked with his feature-length debut, never transcending his reputation as merely a good "action" director as the problems with pacing, plot, characters and dialogue have also plagued all of his future films significantly. Although it's certainly a huge achievement creating a thrilling action flick on such a slim budget and though i'd say there wasn't anything quite like it around at the time of its release, for me, *Versus* has lost most of its magic and what's left is an empty, overindulgent action excercise, all style and no substance. I'm aware there is an even longer, reworked and partly re-shot version out there that's supposed to flesh out the story and characters more but - knowing how bad Kitamura is at both of these things - i'd argue this film would improve way more by tightening it up, trimming half an hour off it.