I struggled valiantly to enjoy Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001), truly I did. After watching the nigh brilliant Cure (1997) a couple of weeks ago, I had more or less convinced myself that every genre Kurosawa touches turns to gold. (For those unfamiliar with the typical Kurosawa film, he likes to take the conventions of a popular genre and introduce his own startling insights.)
Turns out I was wrong.
Pulse begins with a girl named Michi and her two friends, who conveniently form the Stereotypical Teenage Trio™ endemic to any stock horror film. They're anxiously awaiting a phone call from their hacker friend Taguchi, who's supposed to be delivering them a special floppy disk. (Why any self-respecting hacker would still be using floppies is beyond me.)
Michi needs the disk by tomorrow, so she decides to pay the unresponsive computer geek a surprise visit. Grabbing the key to his apartment from underneath a potted plant, she enters to find the cluttered mess you might expect from someone who spends all their time online. Searching for the disk, she's startled to see Taguchi sitting quietly in the back room.
Human interaction seems awkward for him, but he does manage to tell Michi where the disk is. She grabs it and is about to head out when, seized by a premonition, she turns around. Sure enough, Taguchi's limp body hangs from the ceiling — death by LAN cable.
As Michi leaves her house a few days later, she sees a young woman sealing off her basement door with red duct tape. Walking home from work that afternoon, she sees that same woman plummet to her death from the top of an industrial silo (in an unnerving shot that captures jump, fall, and impact all in one take). Within moments, the corpse has dissolved into an otherworldly black smudge.
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Article comments
1 - Steve C.
I think this film, despite its absurdity, is pretty damn creepy. I keep hoping the remake won't suck, even as I know it will. At least they kept the plane...