Pulse - Film Review

Pulse. As in "yours will race." Since its 2001 release, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse has terrified audiences worldwide and now finally gets a legitimate stateside theatrical release, riding the wave of succesful ary house releases of Asian horror movies like Ju-On and The Eye. Kurosawa's a little different than his genre counterparts, firmly believing in the slow burn style of horror, with atmosphere and theme winning out over cheap jump shots. His tale, one that's already being remade for release early next year, is about how even though we get more connected day by day, through technology, we also get more isolated, sitting in front of our computer screens. He uses loneliness to tell an effective ghost story, where the haunted house isn't down the street, it's coming through your computer into your room and your mind. One of the concepts behind the tale, that the afterlife has a set capacity that may have been reached, is such a great basis for a ghost story that you can't believe no one thought of it earlier.

If Pulse has a flaw, it's almost that it's too ambitious, trying to fit too much into one story and getting almost impossible to follow at points. Perhaps due to translation, many of the themes and ideas seem to start up and then never get followed through or explained. The plot itself is almost impossible to follow, at which point, the film becomes more about mood than story. This could have been Kurosawa's intention in the first place, but with his fantastic use of setting and subtle commentary on the technological world, I feel like there was something either incorrectly translated, underdeveloped in the script, or just plain missing - the pulse skips a beat or two, keeping it from horror perfection.

But when it does pound, watch out. Perhaps the best thing about Kurosawa's style is the simple perfection of his framing, with the excellent camera work by cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi. Several times in the film Kurosawa and Hayashi frame something in the center of the screen, like a computer monitor, that we know to be suspicious of and then have a character walk into the foreground of the shot, blocking the item of fear. In other words, you know something bad is going on behind what you're watching. It's an incredibly effective technique that will literally draw you forward in your chair, trying to will the character out of the way so you can see what's going on.

And then there's Kurosawa's use of sound and light. The whole film is so darkly lit, adding to the isolation and depresson of its overall setting, the crowded-yet-lonely city of Tokyo. And the sound. There's no overt creepy chains and screams, but Kurosawa knows how to scare you with a ghostly voice or an unusual creak. The words "help me" will haunt you for days.

Whether you read the title as an electronic pulse or the pulse of a lonely heart, Kurosawa's Pulse is undeniably effective. It's a little too incomprehensible at times but it sticks with you, causing your heart to race even after you've seen the film. And it's deeper than many of its genre brethren, trying to actually say something about the modern isolation of the world we live in. It's a landmark film in the Asian horror movement and any fan of the genre, or horror in general, should prepare for their pulse to race.