Pulse
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
WorkNameSort: Pulse
Unless you’re a hard-core Veronica Mars fan, skip the recent DVD release of the Kristen Bell’starring remake of Pulse, put aside some Xanax and watch Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s artfully terrifying original. Domestically released on DVD earlier this year, the hook is a despairing take on J-horror ‘ the dead, forced to endure an eternity of loneliness, seep into this world via the ‘net. What follows is a nightmare vision of postmodern youth and tech-aggravated interhuman disconnect. The film’s college students who don’t go mad from the dead-cam signal desperately seal doorways with red tape: a future as smeared stains on filthy walls is their reward. A bereaved woman wraps her arms around nothing and tells it, ‘I love you.â?� Starting with a multihued palette, Kurosawa gradually implies color-exsanguinated apocalypse. And don’t even ask me about the crashing dead-plane sequence. There’s no genre return-to-normality, no plucky heroine. Like life, the movie just fucks with you and then it’s gone.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2006.