Pulse, a film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is a Japanese horror film that explores the theme of technology and its potential dangers. The film follows the story of a group of young people who become entangled in a supernatural phenomenon that begins to spread throughout the city.
The film begins with the disappearance of a young man named Taguchi, who was last seen using his computer to communicate with a mysterious website. As his friends try to uncover the mystery of his disappearance, they begin to experience strange occurrences and see ghostly apparitions. They eventually discover that the website is connected to a portal to another dimension, and that the ghosts they have been seeing are the souls of people who have become trapped in this other realm.
One of the central themes of Pulse is the concept of isolation and loneliness. Many of the characters in the film are isolated and disconnected from others, whether it be due to their reliance on technology or their own personal issues. This isolation is a major factor in their vulnerability to the supernatural events that occur in the film.
Another theme explored in Pulse is the potential dangers of technology. The film suggests that our reliance on technology can lead to a disconnection from the real world and a lack of understanding of the consequences of our actions. The website that serves as the catalyst for the supernatural events in the film is portrayed as an alluring yet dangerous entity, tempting people to connect with it and enter the other dimension, but ultimately trapping them there.
Throughout the film, the characters must confront their own fears and insecurities in order to survive and find a way to stop the spread of the supernatural phenomenon. The film ultimately suggests that it is only through confronting and overcoming our own fears and isolation that we can hope to overcome the dangers of technology and the unknown.
Overall, Pulse is a thought-provoking and haunting film that explores the themes of isolation, technology, and the dangers of the unknown. Its atmospheric and eerie atmosphere, coupled with its strong character development, make it a memorable and impactful addition to the horror genre.
Pulse (2006 film)
He tries to hide behind the sofa, but he has to look into the cold fish stare of pure emptiness of this ghost, a young woman! The New York Times. There are moments of green respite as plants and flora try to repel the shadows, but as the film progresses, more and more of the plants seem to be covered over!. . The turning on of a computer becomes a pinprick of fear, and as the characters struggle to retain their survival and individuality while ghosts infiltrate their thoughts and will to exist, a series of disappearances and suicides slowly pervade their way through Tokyo. Ryosuke is slightly appalled that he has a beautiful woman in his messy apartment. Upon returning to her apartment, she witnesses the man with the plastic bag shoot himself on her computer. A ship is on a choppy sea, grey sky all around.
We're all, ultimately, adrift in a Sea of Loneliness, if we are to interpret the symbolism of the final birds-eye shot of this film. Retrieved 2 January 2017. Just like the picture of a pipe is not a pipe. When Ryosuke makes it to her apartment, she has vanished. She wonders what the web address could be to this strange website! Classic scenes and imagery abound in this tour de force directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
I often hear people ask "Why are we so lonely when we're so connected by the internet?! The figure is about to unmask itself when Ryosuke has had enough and switches off the screen. Retrieved 21 June 2014. The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Master of Fear. The first big shock comes when another student goes back to the victim's apartment to do some snooping. Kurosawa's ghosts aren't sexual predators lurking in chat rooms or evil glitches in an OnStar system, but normal people living within their screens and banished to an eternity of immortal despair.
I feel I can only recommend the film as an opportunity to see some really well-filmed sequences, a few of which truly are QUITE haunting. It's very interesting and telling that the movie's near-climax only because the movie takes a sudden, very unexpected shift following which I'm still struggling to make sense out of is in an abandoned factory, an analogue space, and one where ghosts exist in. She considers human interaction is like the computer simulation at the lab, so perhaps she is the author of the programme after all! Retrieved 29 June 2012. People interact with computer screens, televisions. His frequent casting of Yakusho Kôji the hapless businessman hero of the original Shall We Dance as his protagonist puts a man at the center whose face is lined with experience, his eyes brimming with thoughtfulness. As he goes off to pour himself a drink, then the computer fires itself up again! More on that later.
Through his use of long takes, often in very wide master shots, and his disturbing sound design that makes the squeak of a chair or the rustling of leaves a rattling of deep silence, he captures that internal, infernal state of terrorized spectatorship. When they enlarge the image of the other computer monitor, there is a fuzzy but extremely spine-chilling face staring out! He pulls out all the cables from the computer. Kurosawa followed up Cure with a semi-sequel in 1999 with Seance on a Wet Afternoon by Mark McShane, premiered on Charisma as well. I was so relieved to see no spectres with long, black, unkept hair and THEN, in a scene which in EVERY other way was absolutely TERRIFYING, there's the darned long, black hair. At the same time, I'm mostly grateful that Pulse doesn't explain away all its mysteries.
Its central theme is shared with Ring: the fear of technology. He is in dishevelled state but politely tells Michi where the disc should be, as he casually picks up some cables and walks into the back room. So Akira gets a free pass at self-masturbatory cinema because some Californian bloodsuckers propped him up on an undeserving pedestal? Toshio asks what has happened, but Taguchi flickers back to ash. In the background, a shadow moves! It was quite reminiscent of my old Among Us phase. Unlike Untraceable, Perfect Stranger, and their ilk, Pulse isn't rooted in the knee-jerk, clueless resistance of Andy Rooney types; instead, it's in tune with the new, and it's connected to the existential problems of living at a time when our virtual selves have as much or more a presence as our real selves. Masatoshi Matsuo, who portrays Toshio, superbly acts this scene, with emotions transmuting from curiosity, to confusion, to pure shock and terror, as he locks eyes with the ghost. The late 1990s and the early noughties were a boom time in Japanese Horror, with fresh ideas woven around modern technology, curses, vengeful ghosts, sordid buildings or melodramas of extreme violence.
Pulse (2001) directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd
It seems like Ring or Ringu steals all of the attention when it comes to best known Japanese horror. As people begin vanishing in great numbers, evacuations of Tokyo begin, and a full-scale invasion of the Returning to the first scene of the film, Michi and the captain of the ship talk on the lower deck. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Junichiro Hayashi and art director Tomoyuki Maruo devise a superb scene of ghostly goings on! Taking Kairo as an example, there are a number of subtle references to LONELINESS throughout the entirety of the film - the literal isolation of characters, the individual dots expressed within the computer program, the patterns of dissolved ash, the influence of communication and information through both ghostly apparitions as well as red tape, apocalyptic doom, suicide, character mannerisms and interrelationships, etc. I am inclined to agree with the reviews that praise the compelling first half of the film while the second half feels a bit meandering. Unfortunately, his victory in getting a dial-up tone leads to a series of bizarre live video feeds. The figure starts to move forward and sideward into view, jerking and blurry, some sort of bag on its head.
Pulse (Kairo) 2001 (ENG Sub) : Kiyoshi Kurosawa : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Retrieved February 20, 2021. And, third- a tone which wavers awkwardly between frightening dream-logic and explainable cause-and-effect. Harue then presses the "enter" key and sees a video of herself in the present moment on the screen. The only possible explanation is that his stunning talent for creating dense atmosphere leads some viewers to overlook his content. What Kurosawa lacks in narrative clarity, he more than makes up for in pure cinematic suggestion: It's one thing to come out and talk about how humans in the Internet age are like dots that never connect, as Harue does at one point. Indeed a very digital ghost story, one which encourages us to reflect on the new spaces which have been created or transformed since 2000. The strange disorientating feel of the modern urban landscape, all concrete, fire escapes and dingy corridors, augments the creepy feel.
The figure continues to sit motionless. It turns out they're right, but how lost is another matter: When Michi Kumiko Aso goes looking for the missing young man in his apartment, she finds him dazed and a little off; the minute she turns her head to look for an important computer disc, he quietly walks into the other room with a coil of rope and hangs himself. Jason, and Alien vs. But I have found that while Ring has suffered a bit with age, the cross eyed faces and the frame going negative whenever Sadako makes good on her curse, Pulse remains as effective as it was the first time I watched it. Creepy is the ultimate word to describe all the uncanny scenes in this enigmatic film.
