review

PULSE

Kiyoshi Kurosawa makes films that are deeply challenging, both narratively, thematically, and spiritually. Films like CURE, SEANCE, and RETRIBUTION are filled with images so desolate, so haunting, and so terrifying that they are hard to shake for days or weeks after. With their loose narrative structures and seemingly endless long takes, Kurosawa's films feel more like tone poems than horror films but, make no mistake about it, they are among the most moving and horrifying films any country has produced, in any year, in any decade.


Isolation pervades every inch of Pulse.

PULSE, or KAIRO, is Kurosawa's finest film. Ostensibly a ghost story, PULSE is also a painful story of loss and emotional disconnect, filmed in a murky, rather plain style that makes it's underlying themes all the more palpable. A few years after RINGU brought us the one of the worlds first "viral videos", PULSE tells the tale of an invasion, of ghosts rather than marauding aliens, carried out by what was, at that time, something relatively new in the day-to-day lives of most Japanese people: the Internet. After visiting a website that asks it's viewers a simple question, "Would you like to meet a ghost?", people begin to suffer rather disturbing symptoms. They are withdrawn, depressive, dissociative. It seems that something is using this technology to leak out into our world. And it's spreading.


All over Tokyo (and, perhaps, the world), people are being slowly sapped of their will to live by lonely, desperate ghosts. Some commit suicide, others simply disappear. The idea that the technology which brings us closer together is also driving us further apart, feeding a disconnect that could create a cataclysmic meltdown in society, is an intriguing one and one that is played to full effect in the film. The films deadly website consists of webcam footage of people in their homes, suffering in isolation, some committing suicide.


The first suicide

When the friend of our main character dies, all he leaves behind is a black stain on the wall, almost like the aftermath of an electrical fire. Later she receives a phone call from him, a digitized voice that does nothing but repeat the same word over and over: "help...". It seems remarkable to think that only fifteen years or so ago, if we wanted to speak to a friend who has long since moved away, we would call them on the telephone and hear their voice or hand-write them a letter. Now we message them on their MySpace page on the cold, impersonal Internet.


If this sounds a little too existential to make for an exciting horror film, it is. Nothing about this movie will have your heart racing. It will, however, tie your stomach in knots. Kurosawa is a master of the slow burn and this film takes it's time building up steam. But along the way there are scenes of genuine power, such as a woman taking a dive off a water tower, a chilling encounter with a ghost in the library, and a look at a computer program that has seemingly turned against itself. These scenes aside, the majority of the film will be too slow for most J-horror fans, but patience is ultimately rewarded. The final, apocalyptic scenes are stunning and disturbing, all the more so when one considers just how quickly and imperceptibly the world had gone to shit.


Turns out T.S. Eliot was right, the world does indeed end with a whimper.


Essential viewing.


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