Pulse Year: 2001 Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa Written by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa Threat: Ghosts Weapon of Choice: The Internet IMDb page:

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Rish's Reviews
Aka Kairo, and The Circuit in some circles, I took my friend who really enjoys Japanese culture to a double-bill of Asian Horror: Pulse, along with Three Extremes.
Weirdness is afoot in Tokyo. When a coworker doesn't show up for work, his friend investigates and find him pale and morose . . . right before he kills himself. Why he did it is even more disturbing. It has something to do with a creepy internet location, and something to do with the afterlife running out of space and ghosts passing into our realm. I think.
Tyranist can paint me as ignorant for liking The Ring more than Ringu, and maybe it's true. Neither were perfect films, but I am a Westerner, and I need to know why things happen in a movie, not just that they happened. That's probably a difficulty I'm going to have with all Asian cinema, but it certainly hindered my enjoyment of Pulse.
Some of the ghost effects are quite effective, but others are not. In fact, there were a couple of ghosts that just plain made me (and others in the audience) laugh. The filmmakers tried different effects, from CGI to slow-motion to superimposition to a blur to just plain unhealthy white makeup. At the end, they bring out their big guns, and we get a couple of really impressive special effects shots (including a fairly undetectable one in which Tokyo is completely empty).
I have a disadvantage with foreign films in that I find it difficult to distinguish characters (if that comes across as racist, then so be it), and remember names or lines of dialogue. The surreal tendencies of films like this also tend to confuse me more, and makes reviewing them difficult.
There's a scene early on where a teen is trying to get online for the first time, suffering the frustration of getting error messages (compounded by the fact that the internet is in both Japanese and English). It's quite amusing and serves to make the character human and likable. American films could learn from that--though they probably won't.
The premise was certainly interesting, but as the film went on, and more and more strange things happened without adequate explanation, I started to realise that we weren't going to get an adequate explanation. I stopped caring so much and sort of checked out of the last half hour, sort of just hoping it would be over soon.
This has recently been released on DVD here in America, with what may be the worst tagline in recorded history: "the original J-horror thriller!" I was thinking of ways to translate the film into English for a remake, but once I got to a certain point, I understood it would be impossible. You'd have to create a whole new film, though the premise is still sound.
Wait, I just found out, it has been remade into English (starring tyranist's girlfriend Kristen Bell). Whoops.
Best Scare: Some of the ghosts tend to only be standing still in the corner, which was pretty darn freaky. One of them, however, creeps up toward its victim with its fingers clawing the air. That was really good.
I'd Recommend It To: You may not come across this one in a Hollywood Video, but you're welcome to try, since you'll probably like it more than I did.
Posted: March 8, 2006

The tyranist's thoughts
I've been watching a lot of Japanese horror lately and generally, I've had high praise for the genre. The atmospher, the pacing, the stories are all very interesting. When I heard that they were remaking this one as an American film, I had to watch the Japanese movie first. And for the first time, I find myself thinking that a Japanese horror flick was simply awful.
I found the movie in parts baffling, interminable, deliberately obscure, and boring. The plot really seems straight forward: everyone is disappearing and it has something to do with the dead. But they just can't seem to execute on it. There are a few tense moments, but for most of the movie, I was just trying to will it to either make sense or just end. There are a lot of long spaces in which nothing happens separated by brief moments of nothing happening. There are two general sets of characters who only cross paths at the very end of the movie.
I really hope the American remake is better. Of course, I'd stare at Kristen Bell doing just about anything and that alone ought to make it better.
This is just unfathomable drivel. Stay away from it. There are far better Japanese horror flicks out there. I suspect we've seen the cream of the crop and it is only going to go downhill from here as they dredge up anything they can find just because the genre is hot.
Posted: March 8, 2006

Total Skulls: 14

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?