Pulse

I love this weather. Yesterday, my family and I went to Earth's Greatest Zoo, and the weather was perfect! It was sunny with a breeze that packed a nice chill. I feel most comfortable wearing shorts and a hoodie, and after what seemed like a brutal summer, this cool weather is hitting the spot. This weather is one of many reasons why October is my favorite month of the year. So yeah, let's talk about...

Pulse (2001)

Before I begin this review, I want to stress that this movie deals heavily with depression and suicide. While my reach is very small and the number of people reading or watching this is even smaller, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that countless people are struggling right now and have been for some time. If you're thinking of harming yourself, there's help out there. You can go to 988hotline.org and find someone to talk to. If no one has told you today, I want you to know that you're worth it.

OK, let's talk about the movie... I realized I don't have much Japanese horror on here. I think the last Japanese film that I reviewed was the outstanding One Cut of the Dead, but that's a comedy. As an aside, you owe it to yourself to watch that movie. It's fantastic. Anyways, when most people think of Japanese horror, I'd wager to guess The Ring or The Grudge first come to mind, but this movie is very different, and its themes are way more prevalent today than they were when the movie came out in 2001.

The movie can be summed up in one sentence: ghosts are invading the real world through the internet. While it's very easy to explain, there's a lot going on. A woman working at a plant shop goes to check on a friend who has been missing for a few days. While at his apartment, she grabs a disk he's been working on and notices him acting a bit off. While in the apartment, he goes into another room, and the next time we see him, he's hanged himself. Curiously, the body looks as if it's been dead for a while. When looking at the disk, it shows images of her friend staring into the monitor with a face watching him in the background.

From there, the characters learn about "Forbidden Rooms." They're doors that have red construction tape sealing them shut. Naturally, several characters go into these rooms for various reasons. They then learn why these rooms are forbidden when they encounter a ghost. After they escape, they're irrevocably changed. They enter a deep depression and withdraw from society, friends and completely lose their will to live until they give up and just kind of fade away, leaving only a black stain where they last stood. If I were to tell you that, it wouldn't sound scary, maybe boring. But watching it play out, and really thinking about it, it's terrifying. Like, that would be a horrible way to die.

The movie follows two different plotlines that eventually converge, but in the meantime, more and more people keep disappearing, and you come to realize the invasion is happening fast and it's very widespread.

The main thing that stands out to me is how subdued it is. There are no scenes of a ghost jumping out and yelling "BOO!" While the movie doesn't pack the frights, outside of some intensely creepy scenes, the implication is what gets you. Years ago, I reviewed the Korean movie Shutter. I read that in Korean culture, ghosts don't physically harm you, but they constantly screw with you until you can't take it anymore and end your own life. The reveal at the end is phenomenal, by the way. As morbid as that sounds, I love the idea and think it's scarier than a ghost trying to outright kill you. It's a constant torment that you can't escape, no matter what you do, until you can't take it anymore. American horror prioritizes loud and in-your-face scares; Pulse emphasizes dread and has the characters suffer a fatal onset of nihilism.

When the director made the movie, his idea was to highlight how cellphones and the internet could lead to depression in people. He believed that the technology allowing you to interact with people without ever meeting them in person can lead to depression and increased loneliness. He said this in 2001, and while the technology from that time may look funny today, its message hits even harder today than it did back then. This isn't "Old Man Yelling at Clouds" either, but something that's actually happening. I've run too many stories in my newscasts from medical professionals about the dangers of social media. I'm 38 years old, and I'm lucky social media didn't explode until I was in college. I couldn't imagine growing up with the specter of social media hovering over me.

One thing I really enjoyed about this movie is that you get no definitive answers. So many times in horror movies, you get the exposition character who just shows up to fill in the main character, but really, the audience, about the rules and the backstory. In this movie, the characters in the movie are just as clueless about what's going on as the audience is. The red tape isn't explained; it's just there. At one point, one of our main characters is in a library chasing around a ghost when a graduate student kind of shows up to give a theory that the dead are invading the real world. It's weird because he's only in that scene and never shows up again. We don't know how he knows or how he came to that conclusion. While he may fit the definition of an exposition character, his appearance adds to the mystery because he doesn't seem all that concerned and almost seems excited about it.

There's an American remake of this movie starring Kristen Bell, and reading the Wikipedia article, I don't think it's something I'm going to watch. It replaces the dread and the despair of the Japanese version and replaces with jump scares and seemingly more definitive answers that the original gives us. Pulse is a solid and very tense movie that goes about its horror very differently than what you're used to. One complaint that many may have is that it moves slowly, but I think that's to the movie's benefit. The crushing dread these people are feeling to the point where they die by suicide or just fade away wouldn't feel right if it happened right away. It's an effective horror movie that is scary in a different way, and it's a rare film where the commentary still matters decades after its release. Plus, the ending is a pretty well-earned gut punch.

7 Dr. Chainsaws