Pulse

Rating: M - Contains Horror Scenes.
Duration: 104 mins.
Genre: Supernatural Horror.
Actors: Ron Rifkin, Brad Dourif, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Milian, Kristen Bell, Kel O'Neill, Samm Levine, Rick Gonzalez.
Director: Jim Sonzero.
Release Date: Available Now.

Synopsis
This remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Japanese horror hit "Kairo", sees a troubling spate of suicides after students come face to face with a ghostly apparition. The female hero, Mattie, discovers a connection to a computer programme that her boyfriend (and the first to commit suicide) was working on. It’s a programme that is still sending out a signal even though the computer has long since been unplugged…

The Reality
What starts out as a pleasing by the numbers remake of a Japanese classic, soon falls into the teen scream realm, without the clichéd essentials to make it what it’s trying to be.

Essentially the movie tends to stumble around in the dark, much like the characters are doing as they feverously try and discover what’s going on with the world around them.

A door to another realm has been opened and ghostly menaces are infecting everyone that they come in contact with and causing them to commit suicide after a couple of days of neurotic behaviour.

Of course, consistency goes right out the window as one of the students (why do bad things always start with students?) gets sucked into the wall and disappears, instead of the usual suicide.
Then Mattie’s best friend who has been infected can’t take it anymore so just spontaneously combusts into a cloud of ash.

As if that’s not enough, in one scene where our heroes are trying to escape, the ghostly grim reapers suddenly take physical characteristics and attack with gripping, clawing hands.

Inconsistencies aplenty.

The Look
Having only a bad pre-release screener to watch, quality isn’t something I can accurately comment on, but one thing I will say is that there is a clever and very nice transformation as the infection spreads past the campus and into the city. The whole landscape starts to take on a darker, rundown look, and the colour even seems to be slowly sucked out of the film

Food for thought
This is a spiritual horror, which may account for the lack of ‘horror.’ Some people tend to find the spiritual more fearful, but for me I need a more earthly fear. So why is it that the spiritual side of horror is often the one that scares people?

Rent or buy?
Rent it.