A few years ago, the Moviepilot team declared director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse the best horror film of the 2000s. If you want to see for yourself the eerie quality of this tech-terror masterpiece, you have it since March 7, 2024 It’s a very convenient opportunity to do so… if you dare.
Amazon Video* and Apple TV+ have recently added the film to their offering as a rental and purchase title. It can be viewed there in the German dub or in the Japanese original with subtitles.
New at Amazon: Pulse gets your pulse racing
The internet was actually supposed to bring us together as a society. The Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure – Kyua), who incidentally is not related to Akira Kurosawa, already suspected at the turn of the millennium that the new technology would not keep this utopian promise. There’s no other way to explain his film Pulse.
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When the greenhouse employee Michi (Kumiko Aso) visits her colleague Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi), who has been missing for days, to pick up a diskette, she briefly chats with him. A few moments later she realizes that the young man hanged himself in his apartment… a while ago. Video streams of the deceased continue to echo through the internet afterwards and seem to be begging for help. But soon there will be only Taguchi another smudge left on the wall.
Splendid
Pulses
More and more people are now being carried away by the same lethargy, which is taking on almost apocalyptic characteristics. They have forbidden spaces Something to do with the red-taped doors that look both dangerous and inviting at the same time? Why does his computer ask student Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) if he wants to see a ghost? And what’s the deal with the website full of digital dots that want to find each other?
The horror film tells of loneliness in the face of mass technology
Unlike typical J-horror films, Pulse has no explicable curse mechanics. In Ring – The Original you die a week after viewing a cursed videotape, in Ju-on: The Grudge you die after visiting a haunted house. But what is behind the intangible deaths in Pulse? As you can see, it’s not that easy to solve. One would rather ask what leads to loneliness, depression and suicide in big cities and despite an internet connection – and Kurosawa does that masterfully here in the style of the genre.
Have we all already become lonely spirits in forbidden spaces, calling in vain for help? After the long isolation of the corona pandemic, the melancholy of this film feels completely different…
Splendid
Pulses
But don’t let the depressing description mislead you. Pulse is, first and foremost, an unspeakably scary horror film and presentation some of the most disturbing ghostly apparitionsthat Japanese cinema has ever produced. The US remake Pulse – You’re dead before you die, which even spawned two direct-to-video sequels, really can’t keep up.
In an interview with Reverse Shot, Kurosawa explained why he finds the ghosts of his homeland scarier than their American counterparts:
In standard American horror canon, if a ghost violently attacks or stalks you, you at least have a chance. What you fight for then is the idea that you can defeat the evil thing and go back to the good old days when the ghosts weren’t there yet. But if they don’t attack you, the best you can do is find a way to coexist with them. I find the thought of just having to live with this thing much scarier. You have no chance of running away or to fight it; one is struck with him forever.
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