Pulse (Kaïro) (DVD)

Pulse, or Kaïro for you J-horror loyalists, centers around the idea that the afterlife is boiling over. I give this explanation as it is the only explanation in the film as to what is actually going on as people begin to mysteriously begin to commit suicide and showing up in the strangest places afterwards. On top of that, the Internet, cell phones and personal computers become infected with some sort of a virus that displays ghostly images and often times scenes of ghostlike characters committing suicide, such as a gun to the neck.

What does it all mean? While I can't give you a concrete definition of the film I can give you my perception.

The film basically seems like it is writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's image of the Apocalypse as people slowly drift into a state of isolation and ultimately disolve into a cloud of dust or a stain on the wall, all thanks to the growing use of technology. Kurosawa has created a world where people begin to only interact through the use of the Internet; this coupled with a record-breaking heat wave in Tokyo sets the scene for an empty cityscape where the world is dissolved of activity as this technological plague raises hell.

This film bounces back and forth between two separate storylines, while they are unrelated in the matter that the people in both stories don't know each other, they are related in that they are dealing with the same situation, in two different ways. This is something that hurts the film in that audiences are becoming smarter now days and when you see two separate instances you look for ways they will ultimately be connected, especially in a film such as this where the storyline is vague and distanced. So for the two stories to never directly connect is a bit of a tangent in the road that causes a small bit of confusion.

On the other hand, this film is the ultimate J-horror as it doesn't rely on gore or blood to creep the audience out. Instead we are giving glimpses of creepy images and wide-eyed dead people to haunt our dreams. I respect this kind of horror. Creepy is always scarier than a large amount of blood. A decapitated head doesn't scare me, but a ghost slowly appearing above me with its eyes wide staring right through me forces me to calm the goose flesh before I move to the next scene.

As for the plotline, I enjoy films that keep the entire meaning of the story from the viewer, and after writing this review I find myself enjoying this film more as I try describing it. This doesn't mean I entirely enjoyed it, but it does tell me that watching it with a group of friends may evoke a few good scares and a decent amount of conversation, that is if you don't have that one friend that is too hard headed to look below the surface and continually says, "That movie sucked!" No one really pays attention to that guy anyway... do they?

For those of you interested in the special features, they are limited to one behind-the-scenes featurette that I didn't find a lot of interest in, but if you are a J-horror fan, horror fan or Kurosawa follower you may find something of interest here.

I should also mention that Pulse is getting the American treatment and will be released by the Weinstein Co. later this year. The American version is almost guaranteed to be far different and faster paced than this version. If I were to make a recommendation, without seeing the American version, I would definitely recommend seeing this version first. The last time I saw an American adaptation prior to the Japanese version was with Ju-On and The Grudge. I wasn't able to enjoy the Japanese version as much as I thought I would have, had I not seen The Grudge firs and considering I like this film much more than I did Ju-On I can only assume the same would have held true here.