DVD Review – Pulse
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Pulse (Japan, 2001)
Entry # 5 in my horror marathon is something a little different: a subtle, low-key film thick with dread, surprisingly non-violent and with only a couple of the usual Asian-horror suspects. Pulse begins as two stories that intersect about three-quarters of the way through the movie.
Michi is a young woman who works at a Tokyo plant shop. One of the other employees, Taguchi, hasn’t come in for several days; supposedly he’s at home, working on something nonspecific that involves a computer disk. When he doesn’t answer his phone, Michi volunteers to go to his apartment, a techno-cave packed with computer equipment. Taguchi greets her without surprise (or any other emotion, really). While Michi digs through the stuff on his desk to find the disk, Taguchi goes into the other room and casually hangs himself.
His co-workers can’t figure out why Taguchi would commit suicide, but there’s a clue of sorts on the disk (though such an obtuse clue that it can hardly be called one): an image of his apartment with his spectral face reflected on the computer screen. Another plant shop worker, Yabe gets a phone call, apparently Taguchi’s voice repeating “Help me.” over and over. He goes to Taguchi’s apartment, but there’s nothing there but an odd black stain on the wall where Taguchi died. However, a neighboring door is sealed shut with red tape. Since this is a horror movie, of course Yabe goes inside to investigate. What he sees renders him so despondent that he completely loses the will to live and simply disappears.
Meanwhile, Michi witnesses another suicide (What are the chances? Well, actually getting better all the time). Doors sealed with red tape are popping up all over the city. Those whose curiosity gets the better of them end up committing suicide or vanishing. Michi’s too smart for that, and she tries to save her other co-worker Junko, who goes to Yabe’s apartment. But she too disappears. When everyone she cares about has vanished, Michi climbs into her absurdly tiny car and starts driving, looking for other survivors.
The parallel storyline involves Kawashima, a congenial slacker college student who decides to get on the Internet (using dial-up, good Lord…) and who doesn’t believe in ghosts. But his computer automatically connects to a webcam image of a guy with a bag over his head, the words “Help me” scrawled over and over on the wall behind him, with the text, “Do you want to meet a ghost?” Every time he connects (and sometimes when he doesn’t) the computer shows the same webcam images. He goes to his school’s computer lab for help, but the resident expert, a willowy girl named Harue, has no explanation. Another student, supposedly a computer genius, does. His theory is that the afterlife has filled up (a variation on, “When Hell is full the dead shall walk the Earth.”) and the deceased souls are spilling over into the living world, somehow slipping through Internet connections.
Kawashima ends up drifting through a rapidly emptying Tokyo, where he runs into Michi. They team up to find Harue, but she’s had her own ghostly encounter, and by the time they find her, it’s too late. Kawashima has a run-in with a ghost, which seriously puts a cramp in their search for other survivors.
As long as you don’t think too hard about the premise (Internet ghosts? Really?) Pulse is a chilling story with philosophical overtones; the characters discuss the existence of the human soul, what happens to it after death and what the afterlife is like. The attitude of the ghosts suggests that the afterlife sucks. It’s a realm of eternal loneliness, and by confronting the living and depressing the Hell out of them, they are spitefully spreading the misery. Or maybe they want them to die so they have more company. Or they may not mean to drive people to despair at all. Nothing is ever explained definitively, so Pulse keeps the viewer thinking long after the movie ends.
The film is sodden with understated atmosphere: from the beginning, camera filters give everything a vaguely grimy appearance. The movie does pull out that most tired of Asian horror clichés: the long-haired, menacing female ghost, but only s couple times. The most disturbing scenes show the depopulated streets of Tokyo, Michi in a deserted convenience store, Kawashima alone in a formerly bustling arcade with only a specter for company. Nothing is more unsettling than seeing the haunts of mankind devoid of people. Inexplicably, Tokyo is full of burning cars, and Michi sees a military plane crash (is there WiFi on military planes?). two unnecessary and distracting apocalyptic touches that interrupt the otherwise understated creepiness.
The ghosts themselves are almost all equally subtle (long-haired dead ladies aside), and the black stains that form on walls where people have died or disappeared are reminiscent of the burned-in shadows of Hiroshima.
Recommend-o-meter: if you don’t try to understand it too much, Pulse is a weird, disturbing movie that will keep you puzzling for at least a couple hours.
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Watched it first as a rental and was intrigued enough to buy it.