Pulse (Kairo) (2001)
Cast: Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Kato, Jun Fubuki,
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Synopsis: A mysterious website and a wave of suicides... creepy and effective chiller
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

 

“We float around the universe like little dots… isolated and drifting around alone and aimlessly. Whenever we get too close to another dot, one consumes the other, so it's safer to remain at a reasonable distance from everyone else.”

Thus runs one of the more unsettling theories proposed by a graduate student working in a Tokyo computer laboratory in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse.

That single observation neatly encapsulates what this strange, haunting and deeply unsettling ghost story is really about.

Confused?

Read on.

The film introduces us to a small group of young people working at a rooftop plant nursery in Tokyo. Concerned by the increasingly withdrawn behaviour of a colleague who has failed to appear for work with an important assignment overdue, one of his friends visits his apartment to check on him.

She finds him behaving in a disturbingly detached manner.

Moments later, he quietly walks into the next room...

and hangs himself.

Elsewhere in Tokyo, a shy university student named Kawashima, hopelessly out of his depth with computers, accidentally stumbles upon a bizarre website displaying disturbing webcam images of lonely, withdrawn individuals.

A simple question then appears on the screen.

"Would you like to meet a ghost?"

Terrified, Kawashima immediately switches off his computer.

The following morning the website has mysteriously returned.

Unable to explain what is happening, he seeks help from Harue, a thoughtful student working in the university's computer department, whose curiosity soon draws both of them into an increasingly terrifying mystery.

Meanwhile, the disappearances continue.

The greenhouse staff gradually vanish one by one, while throughout Tokyo an epidemic of suicides and unexplained disappearances begins to spread. Nightly television news bulletins become little more than endless lists of missing people. Those who disappear leave behind only strange black stains upon the walls, ghostly reminders that they ever existed at all.

Could there really be a connection between the mysterious website and these disappearances?

Is Tokyo somehow being overwhelmed by the restless spirits of the dead, echoing George A. Romero's famous suggestion in Dawn of the Dead that "when there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth"?

Or is Harue's far more disturbing theory closer to the truth—that the boundary separating death from absolute loneliness is far thinner than anyone ever imagined?

Arriving in the wake of Hideo Nakata's magnificent Ring, Pulse inevitably invites comparison with that modern masterpiece. Both films revolve around malevolent supernatural forces exploiting modern technology, while themes of alienation, isolation and spiritual despair dominate the proceedings.

Fortunately, Pulse never feels like an imitation.

Kurosawa develops his own distinctive atmosphere of quiet dread, relying less upon sudden shocks than upon an almost unbearable sense of melancholy and emotional isolation.

There are, nevertheless, several genuinely terrifying moments.

One particularly unforgettable sequence finds Harue finally accepting the website's invitation to "meet a ghost", only for the webcam image to reveal someone she never expected to see.

Elsewhere, eerie telephone calls in which distant voices repeatedly plead for "Help" rank amongst the film's most chilling moments.

The sound design throughout deserves special praise. Like Ring, the soundtrack becomes an integral part of the horror, surrounding the viewer with an oppressive landscape populated by lost, lonely and deeply unhappy spirits.

If Pulse falls slightly short of greatness, it is only because it lacks the breathtaking climax that elevated Ring into the front rank of modern horror classics.

Even so, Kiyoshi Kurosawa succeeds magnificently in creating an atmosphere of suffocating unease and steadily mounting terror that lingers long after the film has ended.

Overshadowed for many years by the phenomenal success of Ring, Pulse nevertheless stands comfortably on its own as one of the finest Japanese horror films of its era.

Those who admired Nakata's masterpiece should find this haunting, intelligent and frequently frightening chiller every bit as rewarding.