Our Rating: 2.50
A cheap, hollow shell of the terrifying and intellectually engaging Japanese film on which it’s based, Pulse is an apocalyptic nightmare that remains faithful to the original version’s groundbreaking ideas but makes them conform to a schlocky teen-horror paradigm. The movie’s creepy concept, originally devised by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and here adapted by co-scripter Wes Craven, features a computer virus that opens a portal into the underworld, whose undead return to Earth to claim the living. Our intrepid heroine is the bland Mattie Webber (Kristen Bell, Veronica Mars), who starts seeing dead people after witnessing her infected hacker boyfriend kill himself. Craven makes obvious Kurosawa’s largely subtextual intentions ‘ that our pampered lust for technology is eroding our minds, bodies and souls ‘ via his lug-headed 20-somethings’ conversations about text messaging, PDAs, IMs and music piracy. Director Jim Sonzero, however, seems to care only about creating the most blatant and lazy scares. I’m not sure what’s worse: His laughably sensationalized thrills, the script’s half-assed stabs at pop psychology or the shameless promotion of other Weinstein brothers pictures via the Chicago and Sin City posters gracing the characters’ walls.
This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2006.