Pulse

Pulse (2006)

Directed by: Jim Sonzero

Written by: Wes Craven & Ray Wright, based on the film Kairo written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Starring: Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Milian, Rick Gonzalez, Jonathan Tucker, Samm Levine, Ron Rifkin, Octavia L. Spencer, Kel O'Neill, Brad Dourif

Yet another American remake of a Japanese film (and no, I haven't seen the original of this one, either), and yet another movie about how evil cell phones are.

This one is about a young woman whose boyfriend kills himself for no apparent reason. Good thing, he was funny looking and geeky. So she teams up with Captain Sexy (who bought her boyfriend's computer), a rugged man who spends a lot of time fixing cars, to find out why everybody is committing suicide. They discover that it's because there are ghosts coming over the internet and sucking people's life juices or something (still, I wouldn't classify it as a science fiction movie. It was really more straight up horror with a technological twist).

I'm not entirely sure how that was supposed to work. But who cares. Ghosts are coming through cell phone channels or something. I just finished reading a novel where that exact thing happened (not Cell, another one). It was really bad.

Okay, first of all, this was so obviously a mush of all the other Americanized J-horror pics, I don't even have to mention it. It had stuff from The Grudge and The Ring and Dark Water and all of that stuff.

I can forgive it that. The other thing is that I find all this "cell phones are BAD" crap kind of irritating. It was a little too obvious in this one. The use of cell phones and computers didn't seem real - it seemed really forced. It's true that people use their cellphones and computers a hell of a lot more than they should. It's disturbing how much people do (I get bothered by people using them while they drive - the phoning part doesn't bother me, it's the texting. Especially when I'm in the car).

I don't have a cellphone. I live on a spaceship, and the coverage is pretty crappy. Besides, these aliens are pretty technologically retarded. They can travel huge distances in their space ship, but they don't have iPods, or Blackberries or even HDTV. We have a regular DVD player (no HD or Blue Ray), a CD player with a tape deck, a VCR, a computer of course (a clunky old PC, but we do have Ultra High Speed). And I have a pager. And a ray gun. But otherwise it's pretty depressing. You should see the GPS system we use. Fuck.

Moving on. Apart from the fact that this movie was exactly like all the other movies and it was annoying, it wasn't too very bad. It was a little dull - there were a couple of mild scares in there. Freaky looking things jumping out of dark places. But it looked really beautiful. Whoever the cinematographer was (Mark Plummer), he was really good.

There were some interesting images in the movie - the graphics were actually pretty good all considered - and there was some good atmosphere at times. It wasn't terribly frightening, but they maintained a feeling of impending doom throughout. I don't agree with the DVD box about the "astonishing surprise ending". I was neither astonished nor surprised.

Anyway, it was okay, I guess. It looked good, and I guess if you think that technology is evil and taking over the universe, then go for it. Although, if you think that then what are you doing reading this, and why do you have a DVD player (I'm reasonably sure this movie didn't get released on VHS, and if it did, you shouldn't have a VCR either). You dirty little hypocrite.

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