I really enjoyed this flick. I came in with no expectations and I never watched Versus, but the concept of this film was very intriguing to me (looked it up on IMDb).A severely wounded samurai seeks shelter at a temple which unbeknownst to him is the temple of the demon Aragami who wishes to die in combat via our unwary samurai.The conversation is exactly what you would imagine it to be between a man and a being proclaiming to be supernatural. Skepticism and disbelief is played well in here and the scene is great. This is all shot in one room in a dark slightly tainted sort of Buddhist temple. The fact that this movie was shot in only one week is amazing (although if they had spent more time on it it could easily have been better as it is not without its flaws).The slightly creepy serving woman is the only other real character we have on screen and she only has a few words to say at the end. What I really wonder is who she is as perhaps she is Aragami after all and she just enthralls/seduces warriors so she can watch battle after battle? I wish they played that possibility up just a tiny bit more, adding perhaps some covetous looks throughout on the samurais side and more coyness/ seductive possibilities on her part.My only real issues with this film was that it seemed to get a little rushed at the end. The major fight could should have been done better and had slight elements of cheesy stances which were unrelated to the fighting. Also the last warrior, the future attacker could have been cooler looking. I did like the fact that our protagonist seemed to be crazy at that point (which still stands to reason that the woman is really Aragami after all). Also, the electric guitar music at the end seemed out of place. I would have liked a more philosophical ending versus one that makes you think you just finished watching your average action movie.Summary: Very entertaining story built upon Chinese (really any ethnic background) mythology with only 2.5 actors (the woman gets a 1/2 a count since shes more just a visual portion). I just wish 2 weeks was spent on this as it could have been on a whole new level. Either way, I'd definitely recommend this.

I really liked the story in this movie, of mysterious beings that existed in the world and the night they spent before the showdown. However, it turned out to be just another action B-movie plagued by poor acting and story development.I should've known from the English opening credits that this movie would be a joke made for the foreign audience though. I can just see it now, these directors and producers discussing this film in a meeting. "Subtlety doesn't work for foreigners, let's have Oosawa Takao over-react to everything." "They like CG, let's add an unnecessary space scene to it." "They liked VERSUS, let's get Tak to appear in the end"...Katou Masaya's performance as Aragami was pretty impressive. He seemed to be really into the character and portrayed the mysterious character and its motive very well. Oosawa Takao though, I know is a much better actor from other films.This film's action wasn't bad, but nothing out of ordinary. It was clearly produced in a rush and little attention to details. The Aragami's speech, for example, ended sentences with "...Ja" in beginning of the movie, which is what barbaric men say in Japanese, but he practically stopped it altogether in the second half of the movie for no reason. Such abrupt change in speech pattern is a proof of poor production. A nice stab at the Dual Project Challenge, but ultimately a good script wasted.

I Love this movie. The story was a bit confusing but either then that the movie was near perfect.The action was very well choreographed and was not Very over the top like MGSTTS but it was still Over the top action considering how Samurai Films are made nowadays.There was this one part that amazed me were the Temple was all dark and all you can see of them was when the swords collide that was sooo coool. And i love the soundtrack. If you loved the soundtrack from all his other movies then you would love this soundtrack.

I saw this movie at the SF Indie Film fest which presented this & Yukihiko Tsutsumi's 2LDK back-to-back and the audience got to vote on which was the better of the 2. As has been noted, the directors of both of these films stayed up late one night drinking @ Berlin Film fest & dared each other to a duel. The terms of the duel: make a film about a duel involving 2 characters that takes place in one setting and shoot it in 7 days. Unfortunately, TsuTsumi had back problems and was unable to attend, but Kitamura was present & introduced the film. He said Tsutsumi had called him a few months after the pact & asked him how his project was going & took him entirely off-guard as he was working on Ozumi & hadn't done anything. So he wrote Aragami very quickly & used it as a way to help prepare for Ozumi. The theme is very interesting, A samurai runs into an old temple in the mountains w/ his buddy & both are near death. One of the samurai's survives by the help of the temple's resident, who is somewhat of a mystery (is he a samurai? priest? doctor?). Without revealing too much of the plot, the surviving samurai is led into a duel with him & it becomes clear that defeating the temple's mysterious resident is beyond his abilitites as a samurai. The plot (with the exception of the ending) was extremely good & there were some really good moments of rapport between the 2. The film's main theme of war & a warrior's duty/calling is not new, though the way it evolves in this film is quite interesting. Most notable is the way the film shows how homoerotic desire/affection underlies much hand-to-hand combat (i.e. sublimating a desire that is unspoken by attempting to kill the desired). However, this theme is not as well developed as the overall theme. As a result, the ending feels a bit like a cheap shot, a rather hurried attempt at a clever ending, than something that evolves well from the characters' sparring (both verbal & in actual action). Despite this, the ending does present an interesting take on the subject of war & those who are willing to fuel the fire. Those who really come to these films for the action sequences might be a bit disappointed, as the action sequences in this film are short & comprised of extremely quick takes, though there is an interesting sequence that uses flash images of the fighting giving it a strobe effect. Other problems I had with the film were the setting, lighting & sound. The movie took place in a rather odd temple w/ cheesey buddha artifacts. It looked more like more like Disney Park room (if it were created in the 1980s) version of a Japanese Temple complete with dark colored lighting (heavy on red & blue). The light & sound affects in the film (rain, lightning, etc.) also gave the film an artificial feel, making it look almost like some of Fassbinder's films (i.e. Berlin Alexanderplatz), however the distancing affect it creates on the viewer, didn't really seem to add to the film's theme any. The director did state that he was more influenced by the Hollywood films of the 70s & 80s that he watched while growing up, than by martial arts films. Most distracting, though, was the film's electronica background music, which became very repetitious & annoying at times, as it really detracted from the dialogue between the 2 characters. The heavy metal music at the end, perhaps wasn't as out of place as the electronica, given the ending, but was also pretty annoying & felt like overkill. Overall I'd give it a 7/10....with more time, attention & money this one could have been quite exceptional. But unfortunately the director has quite a lot going on (a re-issue of Versus with new scenes, Versus 2 & Godzilla) & so the rushed job that it was really did seem to affect its quality. I did not get to stay to see who won the duel, but judging by how many people were going to the 2LDK ballot box, I think the votes mirror the imdb rating....2LDK is the winner (and that is my feeling too).