Pulse (2006)

Pulse provides clear evidence that by the summer of 2006, the cycle of American remakes of Japanese horror films had reached its inevitable downturn. After peaking with the Ring and scoring a marginal success with The Grudge, the cycle was almost guaranteed to sink to the low-point of this unnecessary and mostly lackluster remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 shocker. It benefits from a standard upgrade in CGI effects and doom-laden "bleak-chic" atmosphere, but it's almost completely devoid of suspense as a group of college students led by Mattie (played by Kristin Bell, TV's Veronica Mars) investigate the suicide of Mattie's boyfriend and discover a kind of wi-fi conduit that allows malevolent spirits to be transmitted from their afterlife to our world via the Internet – think of it as kind of a broadband connection from hell, if you will. Pretty soon it's obvious that Pulse is trying (as Kurosawa's original film before it) to serve as cautionary tale about how we've allowed our lives to become numbed and devalued by using technologies (computers, cell-phones, PDAs, etc.) that keep us all connected at the expense of personal intimacy. Many of the creepiest images from the original Pulse are carried over here, and director Jim Sonzero does his best to keep the cautionary themes intact, but at some point (and after a great deal of pre-release tinkering to fit the obligatory PG-13 rating for the lucrative teen market) you have to ask yourself: why bother? --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

Pulse - Can't Speak For The Original, But The Remake Has Flat-lined

Pulse makes several of the typical mistakes that recent horror films seem to repeat. Despite great cinematography and special effects work, the movie is saddled by a ridiculous script that works too hard explaining the back-story yet still winds up making no sense. What's worse, they obviously had a budget and several well known actors. This could have been a good movie, but it succeeds only in startling those with jittery nerves.

If I ever saw the original, I have since forgotten it or the differences are too many for me to draw the connection. It doesn't really matter what this movie is based on. It simply does not stand on its own.

The Good

The dark filming and subtle lighting of the film do deserve some credit. They definitely add to the mood of the intersection between the worlds of the living and the dead. Yes it has been done before, but achieving this look is still technically challenging. The muted colors and darkened pallet are used in a way that actually aids in the story. So kudos to the director of photography and the cinematography team.

The special effects are also relatively well done. Although I still have a gripe in the fact that they are sometimes misused to create rippling and fuzzy fade-ins where the monsters or ghosts appear. Still, that seems to be more of a flaw of editing or direction. Whoever did the CGI work here deserves a lot of credit. Unfortunately that is where the bulk of the positive ends.

The Bad

*Mild spoilers*
The story focuses on some college friends in a small town where research into an expanded wireless communications band has allowed *creatures* or *ghosts* to cross over into the world of the living. As more people commit suicide and as their friends disappear, our young heroine much search for the answer in the form of a computer virus to disable the servers that are allowing these creatures to cross into our dimension. These creatures seek out the living to take their life force away. Nothing about this story in and of itself is unacceptable. This is horror after all. But they go to great lengths to explain how this might be possible. In fact, the excessive explanations of the impossible are coupled with some things that are never explained, like that silly red tape. On top of that, some of the lines that are given to these actors make no sense in the context of the movie.

The story line is so ridiculous as to prevent any rational person from suspending disbelief. That's hard to do to a horror fan. We can watch Mike Myers get shot 30 times and accept that he can get back up. We are willing to accept space monsters coming to earth to eat us. The fact that this story was so loosely written as to be unbelievable is terribly disappointing.

And if you want your movies to be filled with action, be prepared for Achilles heel number two. Not only is the plot silly, but the story takes forever to get there and drags on in an ineffective attempt to create angst or dread.

Some of the acting is ok, but plenty of it is bad too. And when you have terrible lines to deliver, it doesn't make acting any easier. They definitely seemed to over-rely on the exaggerated scream here.

*Mild Spoiler Ahead*
If you know anything about technology, you will not want to watch this. For example, there's a point where these creatures can apparently use cell phones to locate the living (apparently, they have access to CDMA and GSM technology). The heroine stares at her phone and notices the bars as the radio bulletin warns against using computers or cell phones. The monsters appear. But once they get to a *dead zone* the monsters disintegrate. Hmmmm. Do you think you might want to turn your phone OFF??? Now I know where the idea for all those Verizon *dead zone* commercials came from.

The movie also has an oversimplified ending. The solution to the problem is both silly and poorly depicted. Granted the action does pick up above the occasional ghost jumping out at you to startle you. When you finally reach the conclusion, you will probably experience more laughter than dread.

Conclusion

In my humble opinion, this movie was a missed opportunity. If you are just looking for a few hours of mindless fun, this might still do it for you. But if you know anything about how technology works, don't like slow moving movies, don't like dark noir movies and aren't easily startled by ghosts jumping out of nowhere, then this will bore you more than it will scare you. And if you are critical of the many remakes of Japanese horror movies that don't live up to the originals, this probably fits in that group too. Only see this if you have a free rental or it's on cable, but don't buy this DVD till you've seen the movie a few times.

Enjoy. October 4, 2008

A wannabe horror movie with no pulse

Another remake that doesn,t work. Okay it starts out alright in the first 15 minutes then the rest of the movie is a huge let down. They totally butchered the storyline. Don,t waste your time with this boring mess. August 16, 2008

Scary Monsters

PULSE reminded me a little bit of IMPULSE with Tim Matheson and Meg Tilly from the 1980s, but it's not as good. Its Japanese origins show up in its lackluster pacing and its dependence on a group of pale, powerful, angry ghosts who can not be stopped. Once I see that an American movie was based on a previously existing Japanese one, I sort of stop hoping for a happy ending, I already know everyone is going to die (unless there's a child in it who can somehow reach back to a dead child ghost and get them to stop harassing today's adults), and there are so many movies nowadays in which everyone dies, and the blue filter is pumped up to fill the screen with industrial angst, enough already.

What a tragedy that low ratings cancelled TV's VERONICA MARS and stranded poor Kristen Bell in a movie career that does nothing but insult her. It's sort of like what happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar ended, but SMG walked out of Buffy, so it's her own stupid fault, whereas if this were the best of all possible worlds VERONICA MARS would still be on the air, Logan and Piz perhaps squaring for an all-out competition now for Veronica's favors. Instead we have PULSE. It's sort of like a parody of VERONICA MARS' difficulties dealing with her mother. Here we see the mother trying to call Mattie, Mattie trying to call the mother, then an hour later she tries again, then the movie forgets all about her.

Please, someone, take poor Christina Milian out of the movies. She can't really act and nobody should have to play that scene where she's in the laundry room, the washer opens from within, and a ghost or something invisible starts throwing her laundry, one item at a time, out of the washer into the floor, splat. Splat. Splat. And that's her best scene! It's another horror movie where every person of color goes long before the white people. You'd think Hollywood would learn a lesson but oh, no. The friends of color are seemingly there just to perish and give their white co-stars some good discovery scenes: "Why, Izzie, why?" "No, Stone, no!" Nevertheless this movie has some important points to make and has warned me of the danger of turning on my computer and cell phone. Got to go. July 30, 2008

Decent Concept, Poorly Fufilled

Pulse is a horror movie, with a modern twist. Being in the so called digital 'myspace' age the internet seems necessary, it wouldn't be complete without the terror lurking within. Ghosts of some sort in some odd manor established the internet as a haunting ground! They can effect wireless gear, cell phones, and printer as well.

The concept seems a bit cheesy, but in all honesty it is somewhat original.The characters are presented with a chaotic mass suicide problem sweeping their city. The suicides seem not to be linked in any manor, but have touched home base with the leading female character (Mattie). To not spoil the movie, some frequencies were not meant to be touched... Some computers hide details on these events. Ghost will try to claim your will to live. Certain objects help prevent the ghosts from entering, but how long can one survive without the will to live?

As appealing as that may sound, the movie suffers from a short length (88 minutes), the effects are not too great, and the movie never really 'built' up. Upon understanding the basic plot, it feels like it's already over before it truly began! The ending felt rushed, and the scare factor was minimal. If you are still interested in this film, try a friday night rental for this, or catch it on a movie channel.

July 12, 2008

Ghosts from Cyberpsace

Pulse is not your average story of the Internet killer kind of thing. It is a story about a college student who has hacked his way into someone's computer and released a virus, or so they think. Weird things begin happening to those who use the Internet and people start to die or disappear.

The whole thing is focusing around the hacker's girlfriend who is trying to put a stop to this madness while losing her friends around her one by one.

I thought the movie was pretty entertaining and suspenseful up until the ending of the movie. The ending I was not pleased with one bit. I have not read the book this thing was based on, but the movie fan likes to see a happy ending, where all is safe, everything's over, life goes back to normal, and maybe it closes on one last demon remaining who has a quick clap sound effect to show it's not over, of the hand punching out of the ground, that sort of thing... not what they did for this movie.

If it was based on Mars, you might believe it, but it ends in a disbelief of reality that really spoiled the finale of this movie.

The overall FX and plot is OK, it was one of the better films I had seen for a while, well, up until the ending of the movie. It's pretty entertaining, but it just needed an alternate ending to help make it a better film.
June 29, 2008

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