Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

thesar-2 Watching Pulse now for the first time was as hard as starting from the beginning of The Big Bang Theory in modern times.On that side tangent, I did recently start from episode one of The Big Bang Theory having never seen an episode and hearing everyone rave about it. The way they went on and on about the technology for when that show began was difficult – knowing what I know now.And in this 2001 Japanese ghost story, it was equally uncomfortable hearing that dial-up tone over and over again. I don't ever wanna go back to those days!Eh, I digress. The movie was alright. Had some good ideas and a last act ten times better than the movie as a whole. But, I found it increasingly difficult to keep up with who was who and their relationships with each other. NO, that's not a racist statement of "oh, all Asians lookalike." In fact, they all had very unique styles and appearances. It was just a bunch of random people with different backgrounds and employments/schooling that I had troubles with.Also, ghost stories aren't my forté. And honestly, when I started this movie on Amazon streaming, I thought I was watching another movie about lightning strikes or a Mother Nature Attacks movie. But, when it's established it's a ghost story, I try to give it the benefit of the doubt, even though they never scare me.Pulse is about the "internet" and how it's a portal. Apparently, back in 2001, one couldn't Google what this "internet" was, so one character, laughably, has to pull out a very large manual to learn how to connect to such a modern thing. Stop. I started using the "internet" in 1992 in college. Back then, for me and my friends, it was an Electronic Forum (or EF) used between students and teachers at school and even, gasp, off-campus! Obviously, we were in the stone-ages in 1992, but we definitely knew what the "internet" was in the very early 1990s and not long after, AOL became the Wal-Mart of the online world.So, I do NOT give this movie a pass that someone, specifically a young male adult in technology-centered Japan, wouldn't know what the "internet" was or even bookmarks, the "screen-print" key, etc. in 2001. Hogwash. Regardless, the movie is the ghost story to the line "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." So, ghosts figured out a way to transport via dial-up (haha, sounds silly and yeah, it was,) and make people commit suicide, I guess by scaring them to death and loneliness. It's up to our random young adults, including the ignorant- internet-idiot to try and figure out the motives and keep their (seconds-earlier-strangers) best friends alive. Oddly, since this was my first (and frankly, only) time seeing this, it seemed awfully familiar and felt like this movie had already been remade. Alas, it had in America half a decade later – nope, not interested in that and it looks awful, anyways. But, it also felt like the other Japanese film, Ringu and its American remakes as well. I guess this ghost portal thing was hot back then.I suppose if you're scared of ghosts and still don't know what the "internet" is, you might find enjoyment here. It has some good scenes and use of silence after a tense score placement, but overall, it's too long of a movie to get to the goods.***Final thoughts: I am not opposed to reading subtitles (always better than dubbing!) but damnit, stop putting all white subtitles on top of pitch-white scenes! At times, words were literally fleshed out from the screen thanks to the white-on-white subtitles.

Maz Murdoch (asda-man) I can totally see why Pulse bores the hell out of some people! It moves at a very slow pace, and if ghost stories do nothing for you then you'll most certainly nod off. Also, if you're like my family and you demand an ugly decapitation every ten minutes, then you aren't going to be wanting to watch this. However, ghost films do do it for me. I find them extremely creepy and Pulse proves itself to be one of the creepiest I've seen. It all comes down to what scares you. I rarely get scared. The last film to properly scare me was Noroi: The Curse, however a couple of scenes in Pulse scared the Jesus out of me! I have just two words... Wobbly ghost.To me Noroi: The Curse is a masterclass in how to scare your audience. It filled me with fear, and its ending is a real gut-puncher. Whilst Pulse doesn't quite make itself quite as scary (nor as good) as Noroi, it is still one of the creepiest films I've seen in a long time. It's pretty essential that you watch this on your own, in the dark, with the sound turned up (there's some great use of sound and music) in order to get the full chilling experience. The wobbly ghost scene is one of the scariest things I've seen in my life! I can't explain it, but it gave me chills and I had to look away! Something about the movement was so unnatural and unnerving, I was thinking that I was going to be in for one hell of a ride! Unfortunately however, because this scene happens reasonably early on, there is only one other scene that almost matches its sheer scariness.Don't get me wrong, Pulse features a string of supremely creepy scenes. It's unlike anything I've seen before in the ghost department as its slow pace builds up a wonderfully eerie atmosphere (I can't see the American remake being any where near as masterful as this!) and some scenes are full of choking suspense, such as when the man first gets contact from the website. My only problem with the film is that it lacked character development, and I would've liked to have gotten to know the characters better. Also, the plot sometimes doesn't make much sense (I don't understand the majority of the third act) and the characters have strange reactions e.g. A woman see someone committing suicide but then it's never mentioned again. The whole apocalyptic element is also not fully explained, however I admired its ambition.But Pulse is really about its creepy atmosphere and that's what it succeeds in doing. It's the type of film that places its disturbing images under your brain and stays there. I never get scared, and it's refreshing to actually feel terrified at what I'm watching. I didn't find Pulse boring, although some scenes did drag it was never boring. I just found it a little confusing. Nevertheless, Pulse is one of the best ghost films I've seen. It relies on its stupendous atmosphere and seriously creepy moments. One scene towards the end, nearly scared me as much as the wobbly ghost! Pulse has the ability to send shivers down your spine and have your hair stand on end, which certainly makes it something special in my eyes! However, I was slightly disappointed that that terrifying face on the poster wasn't in it!

bwilkening I think I saw this film mentioned in of those many "Scariest Movies You've Never Seen" lists that always seem to circulate around Halloween time. The plot sounded interesting, so I decided to check it out. If one had to describe a plot, it starts with a teenager who kills himself in a creepy fashion, and how his death affects his coworkers and friends. Each of this small group of young adults starts to experience strange occurrences.All of this is tied together with the emergence of a new phenomenon called the internet (remember, this was released in 2001). In a separate side story that eventually intersects with the characters mentioned in the first paragraph, a young man is excited to be installing his internet software and connecting his dial up modem for the first time, but when he finally connects, his computer seems to be a portal into rooms populated by creepy half human/ghosts. He seeks to advice of a computer science student, and together they try to figure out what is going on while being drawn further into the mystery.The film is obviously pushing in a not so subtle way a message about how technology and the internet are making us more isolated and lonely, to the point where the line between people and ghosts is blurred. Even though the message is not subtle, it is effective, and story delivers some genuinely creepy and disturbing scenes in exploring that message. As many other reviewers who are much more familiar with Japanese horror than I am have mentioned, this genre of horror is less interested in quick and instant payoffs than in gradually building a sense of dread.I deducted a couple of stars because I felt the running time could have been shaved a bit without much loss of effectiveness, and because I shared the concerns some other reviewers have mentioned about how the ending felt disconnected from the earlier parts of the film. But I'd still recommend it. Even though the internet technology displayed in this film feels extremely outdated already, the film's message is still relevant, and it left me with a lingering sense of dread and creepiness that endured even after the movie had ended.

ashyv69 Kairo aka Pulse is a 2001 Japanese psychological horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Haruhiko Katô and Kumiko Aso. The film(produced by the legendary Toho studios) is a modern day ghost story set in urban Japan which follows a group of young adults who are at the centre of a paranormal epidemic.The film follows the two parallel story lines involving Kudo (Kato)and Kawashima (Aso). Kudo is a young woman who works at plant shop and starts to notice something very wrong with her friends. After witnessing her friend Taguchi inexplicably hang himself at the beginning of the film, one by one Kudo's friends fall into despondent trances and lose the will to live. The victims often receive phone calls from the recently deceased who can only utter the words "help me" and Kudo soon starts to notice doorways lined with red tape appearing all over Tokyo.The Kawashima storyline offers more a of an insight into the mythos of the ghosts and explains that the spirit world has somehow found a portal to spill over into our world via the internet. Kawashima himself discovers a strange website which shows grainy snuff-like web cams featuring depressed individuals which asks the chilling question "Would you like to meet a ghost?". Through consulting university staff Harue and Yoshizaki it is further revealed that it is the isolation in Japanese youth culture that is creating these suicides, and that after realising there is no life after death people simply lose the will to live. The string of deaths eventually escalates in to an apocalyptic situation by which time the two story lines converge as Kudo and Kawashima try and escape the city and it's ghostly inhabitants together.Kairo is a very subtle and underplayed horror film, it won't necessarily make you jump or scare you as you watch it but the imagery and concept will stay with you long after the film finishes. It is certainly the look and feel of the film that gives it it's unique quality, the amateur webcam footage, the slow-mo effects and the look of the ghosts themselves. Instead of the over used pale-faced, long-haired Japanese ghost the film makers opt for a more classical style. For the most part the ghosts are simply shadows, against walls, lurking in public places etc. This is a brilliantly simplistic approach as it encourages the viewer to use their imagination and really engage with the themes of the film. Thematically speaking the film is very rich and philosophical, to understand the film fully though it is important to have some background knowledge on Japanese culture. Hikikomori is the Japanese phenomena referring to young adults who withdraw from society and isolate themselves in their houses, couple that with the well known suicide problem in Japan and you start to see what the film is really about. Which makes it all the more sinister.The trouble with Kairo however is no matter how metaphorically interesting it is or how eerie and unsettling some of the sequences are it is still, at it's core, a faintly silly premise. This was something much more apparent in the hideously misjudged American remake (Pulse 2006) but it's still there. The atmosphere and dread built up in the first half of the film is somewhat undermined by absurd conversations later in the film about how the spirit world is now full to the brim so now ghosts will invade our world and kill anyone they come into contact with. Simply putting red tape around a doorway seems like quite a flimsy safeguard against this and along with a number of other things is never really fully explained. It's a real disappointment that after engineering such a smart and thoughtful concept for a horror film that the execution feels a little bit clumsy and underdeveloped.If you can suspend your disbelief then Kairo is a great psychological horror film much in the same vein as Ringu (1998) or Dark Water (2002)with genuinely meaningful metaphors behind the scares. The fractured narrative is typical of the Japanese style and does require extra focus but if you let yourself be engaged you will be scared out of your wits. The film perfectly encapsulates the feelings of isolation, loneliness and despair which are certainly not exclusive to Japananese youth and also reflect a time when there was still much aprehension about the internet and it's effects. For these reasons Kairo should definitely be given a chance and just to reassure you, that shadow in the corner of your bedroom is definitely not a ghost.4 Stars **** Have you seen Kairo or Pulse (remake)? Did the film affect you?