Versus

Evil Dead 2 meets Street Fighter by way of The Matrix in this wild and woolly zombie/yakuza/samurai/kung fu/splatter flick directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. Throughout the world there are 666 portals to the other side; the 444th is Japan and is called the Forest of Resurrection, where good has battled evil for time immemorial. The film opens with prisoner KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi) and his fellow cellmate escaping a maximum-security prison and ending up in the forest where they are supposedly to be picked up by a band of gangsters in a shiny Mercedes and taken to a safer place. Instead, the gangsters try to use them and a female hostage (Chieko Misaka) as pawns in a larger power struggle. A gunfight ensues killing KSC2-303's colleague and the mob boss, but just as the standoff is about to yield more violence, an odd thing happens -- the dead get up and attack the living. In the chaos, KSC2-303 and girl disappear into the forest with a band of slickly coifed yakuza in hot pursuit. High-kicks, machine guns, and rampant disembowelments ensue. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.