Left Field Cinema

Pulse is a really strange horror film for many reasons and as such is the first film in months (the last one being American Psycho) to leave me wondering quite what I'm meant to think - leaving me with both a huge deal of admiration and a pinch of dislike.

The plot, and don't worry about trying to keep up with this, is that some strange videos are appearing on people's computers, against their wishes, over the internet which feature some extremely creepy stuff (ghosts and such) and one man early on commits suicide after watching these videos. The man's friends investigate and creepy stuff happens around them as a result. Then there's some stuff about red tape surrounding forbidden rooms. And there's strands of plot about friendship and loneliness. And ghosts start appearing where people have died. And at one point the film goes post-apocalyptic. And then there's the social commentary of the film on how all of us are really alone and how the internet allows us this psuedo-escape from the loneliness whilst in fact just making us all the more distant from each other.

To be honest the film is best when it is completely unexplained and the moments where characters try and explain what is going on are the moments where the film falters slightly - at one point a character tries to explain why the ghosts are appearing and though it is amusing listening to his borderline nonsense it is also highly frustrating because the film is trying to explain away something that doesn't need explaining away. We get it - ghosts are appearing. The art to a film like this is, as it does, making the appearance of the ghosts so horrifying and making the rest of the film so tense and captivating that when the ghosts do appear you just suspend your disbelief and buy it. The art to a film like this is not, as it does, to try and justify everything - and I do mean try here because the explanations are incomprehensible.

But the scares? Boy do they deliver. The film hides a lot from you and often what goes unseen, just off the edge of the screen or in the eyes of a character, is what makes you tense up. The film teases with you all the way through allowing what you don't know to be just as hard to bear as what you do. That's not to say it doesn't go for full blown scares though, in particular one early encounter with a female ghost which is the scariest and probably best scene in the film as she slowly walks toward her victim and Kiyoshi Kurosawa of course teases us yet again by slowing down the inevitable by letting the ghost slowly slip and fall in a way which is just plain creepy - and the scene goes on playing itself out for every second it can resonably do because this is not a film that gets your pulse racing but instead leaves you on edge, never able to rest and relax. This is pretty much the opposite of modern Hollywood horror in that this doesn't try to scare you via sudden, cheap shocks and is willing to build up tension slowly and surely.

And of course the camerawork. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous - this is a scary horror film where nine tenths of what happens happens in broad daylight and the use of this light is incredible making this a horror film with a slightly spiritual edge which of course helps believability but also makes the film a delight to watch (whilst still scaring the hell out of you).

Unfortunately the film does proceed to lose its way more and more throughout and though I should be more hesitant about this I can't help but admire that this is a horror film with a lot of ambition in a decade where most well known horror films just amount to 90 minutes of nasty people torturing each other in the most salacious and thus morally repugnant ways imaginable. Either that or cheap, unscary, tedious Hollywood remakes (hey look, Pulse has one of these) of far superior asian horror films. Yes the film doesn't quite cope with its ambition leaving you with a final ten minutes that are ingenious, rediculous and hard to swallow all at the same time but the movie has left its mark on me and for all its faults (adding to the list some not entirely convincing CGI near the end) it is genuinely quite an impressive horror film - frightening, beautiful and a bit shoddy all at the same time.

William Burchett