Pulse Movie Review

Pulse [Kairo] (2001)

Rent Pulse on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Directed by: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring: Haruhiko Katô, Kumiko Asô, Koyuki
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
Two groups of people discover evidence that suggests spirits may be trying to invade the human world through the Internet.

Verdict
Not many horror movies would I call thoughtful, but this predicts how isolating the internet will make the world. Ghosts reach out to people, seeking to escape the isolation but it doesn't help anyone. These concepts are embedded in this creepy movie that is unsettling at all times. Loneliness is what plagues the dead, a feeling imparted to the living upon contact. The living faced with the reality of what happens after death become despondent.
Watch It.

Review
The synopsis doesn't quite do this justice, but it's also a succinct description after you've seen the movie. Initially I wondered how the plot worked and how the movie would make internet ghosts plausible.

Nearly from the beginning this movie is unsettling. An employee at a plant shop stops showing up for work so Michi (Kumiko Asō) goes to his apartment. She finds him, but he's distant, quiet. What she sees in the apartment makes her question her own perception.

Haruhiko Kato, Kumiko Asō play Ryosuke, Michi

This is a little bit of ghost in the machine. At one point text on a monitor asks, "Do you want to meet a ghost?" It's disturbing, the question of what's going on and what's happening to these people. Everything that occurs is so creepy. Whatever is happening to these characters, they become despondent. They encounter this ghost or thing, but how?

The ghosts aren't invading via the internet, they're contacting people and the internet is the most apt avenue with the amount of time people spend online. This is a commentary on loneliness. Computers and the internet were supposed to connect us, but in this movie they don't. Ghosts reach out to the living but the confrontation leaves the living with the realization that only loneliness awaits them. It's a thought so alarming that people become discouraged and want to escape. The dead are consumed by a crushing isolation, and that feeling spreads to the living. We never see the ghosts act maliciously, they're just drawn to the living.

Kumiko Asō plays Michi

Contact with the dead imparts a paralyzing fear of being alone. The ghosts, in trying to resolve those feelings only perpetuate it. Everyone that encounters a ghost ends up dead, leaving a black stain where they were last living. The corollary with the internet was and is the fear that the internet isolates and distances people. Today there is less community. People are more isolated and avoid strangers. This movie was predictive. There were chain emails about 'forward this email or encounter misfortune.' This movie takes that no another level. What a shocking realization, discovering that when you die you're faced with an inescapable feeling of despair.

It's not just that, but this is happening everywhere. Some of the last images we see are a city that looks post-apocalyptic. The ghosts are trying to make contact all over the world.