Pulse (2006)

Another Crap-Orama Re-make Of A Good Movie

If you've seen the original Pulse movie stick with that and try to forget that Hollywood made another horrible try at a re-make. After the monetary success of the Ring re-makes dubious as they were Hollywood just had to let their greed show and come out with a load of atrocious re-makes like The Grudge, Shutter, and One missed call, and this movie joins the list of idiotic re-makes. The story itself promised to be entertaining about seemingly spirits coming though a unknown frequency that was discovered and than spreading through the living world through that frequency until the whole world was infected. I know that it sounded a little stupid but I thought with this re-make they would keep mostly close with the original and they do somewhat but it also differs greatly an other areas. The most annoying thing about the movie was the actors except for about maybe four actors the rest were just so pathetic in their acting skills, it seemed that they were just reading the script lines with little or no emotional feelings. Also what you might find laughable is the story-plot that red tape will keep the spiritual energies out of the area if you seal a room up completely with the red color tape, but if you seal yourself in a apartment or room what are you going to do about food unless you stockpiled some up I mean your going to starve to death so whats the point? All I can say in the end is for the price and if your curious rent the movie or go ahead and buy it but don't expect a great deal from this sorrowful re-make... December 23, 2008

Despite a promising premise...will NOT get your pulse racing. Skip it!

I saw PULSE (the "unrated" version) just 5 days ago, and I feel even now that I can hardly remember half of what happened in the film...so generic and uninteresting did it turn out to be.

The film has a promising premise. Ghosts are using the internet to enter into our world, because they operate on a frequency that we've now been able to tune in to. I like that...it's a clean, simple concept that could have gone in a million directions. In PULSE, at least initially, it appears that the dead are someone able to infect those who encounter them online...essentially turning the living into death-craving half-zombies. Basically, they compel their occupants to commit suicide.

This all gets kicked off when the boyfriend of college student Kristen Bell commits suicide, more or less in front of her. Then various friends of hers do stupid things to get themselves killed as well, even though they figure out basically what is going on fairly early on.

This is one of those films where the low-budget has led the director into creating a world that isn't entirely recognizable. The main characters are all college students (I think)...but they never go to class and none of them live in apartments or dorms. They seem to prefer seedy loft-like spaces that have peeling paint, no lighting, moisture on the walls, etc. There are virtually no adults in the film at all...only poor Ron Rifkin, who must have lost a bet and was forced to play the world's most ineffectual psychiatrist. I presume he filmed his scenes with Bell in one day...and not a single moment of their time together adds anything to the film.

PULSE starts out as a horror story, but by the end, you realize it has morphed into a science fiction film...an apocalyptic one at that. The concluding minutes of the film are so far removed in tone, scope and genre from the opening minutes that it is kind of flabbergasting how jarring it is.

In the early going, the film generates a few chilling moments. Just the images of ghosts captured on the computer monitors are creepy, and the early scenes carry a sense of foreboding. But these same mildly successful elements are almost literally repeated time and time again, to vastly diminishing returns each time. The movie becomes tedious pretty quickly.

No one gives a particularly effective performance, mostly because the characters are almost utterly generic. Bell gains no points with me for her efforts. Ian Somerhalder (who was Boone on LOST) plays a computer geek, of sorts, who seems to become something akin to a love interested for Bell...but for no discernible reason. He is also quite unbelievable in his role. Samm Levine, a star of FREAKS AND GEEKS, turns up here, and that put a smile on my face until I realized this character was a complete cipher.

This film, perhaps, rises to the level of the low-budget films that make up the AFTER DARK HORRORFEST DVDs...horror films that couldn't muster up a theatrical release. It feels cheap. It feels self-important. And worst of all, it is boring. It certainly does NOT get the PULSE racing (sorry to end with a bad pun, but it's no worse than the ending of this film.) November 21, 2008

This movie has no pulse. It's completely dead.

It contains no suspense nor horror. I watched it in the theatre and got bored after 30 minutes. The special effects are exactly like those of a bad video game. I mean I can see they look obviously fake. The acting is like that of a bad B movie. It seems remaking a Japanese hit movie does not guarantee a success in North America.

Save your money on this. October 23, 2008

Meh...

This one was just meh...it was run-of-the-mill horror, designed to make you freak out about your technology use. I am pretty sure I got this free bundled with my Halloween remake and thats why it was on my DVD shelf. I watched it all the way through and then escorted it to my "sell" pile. October 18, 2008

Pulse - Can't Speak For The Original, But The Remake Has Flat-lined

Pulse makes several of the typical mistakes that recent horror films seem to repeat. Despite great cinematography and special effects work, the movie is saddled by a ridiculous script that works too hard explaining the back-story yet still winds up making no sense. What's worse, they obviously had a budget and several well known actors. This could have been a good movie, but it succeeds only in startling those with jittery nerves.

If I ever saw the original, I have since forgotten it or the differences are too many for me to draw the connection. It doesn't really matter what this movie is based on. It simply does not stand on its own.

The Good

The dark filming and subtle lighting of the film do deserve some credit. They definitely add to the mood of the intersection between the worlds of the living and the dead. Yes it has been done before, but achieving this look is still technically challenging. The muted colors and darkened pallet are used in a way that actually aids in the story. So kudos to the director of photography and the cinematography team.

The special effects are also relatively well done. Although I still have a gripe in the fact that they are sometimes misused to create rippling and fuzzy fade-ins where the monsters or ghosts appear. Still, that seems to be more of a flaw of editing or direction. Whoever did the CGI work here deserves a lot of credit. Unfortunately that is where the bulk of the positive ends.

The Bad

*Mild spoilers*
The story focuses on some college friends in a small town where research into an expanded wireless communications band has allowed *creatures* or *ghosts* to cross over into the world of the living. As more people commit suicide and as their friends disappear, our young heroine much search for the answer in the form of a computer virus to disable the servers that are allowing these creatures to cross into our dimension. These creatures seek out the living to take their life force away. Nothing about this story in and of itself is unacceptable. This is horror after all. But they go to great lengths to explain how this might be possible. In fact, the excessive explanations of the impossible are coupled with some things that are never explained, like that silly red tape. On top of that, some of the lines that are given to these actors make no sense in the context of the movie.

The story line is so ridiculous as to prevent any rational person from suspending disbelief. That's hard to do to a horror fan. We can watch Mike Myers get shot 30 times and accept that he can get back up. We are willing to accept space monsters coming to earth to eat us. The fact that this story was so loosely written as to be unbelievable is terribly disappointing.

And if you want your movies to be filled with action, be prepared for Achilles heel number two. Not only is the plot silly, but the story takes forever to get there and drags on in an ineffective attempt to create angst or dread.

Some of the acting is ok, but plenty of it is bad too. And when you have terrible lines to deliver, it doesn't make acting any easier. They definitely seemed to over-rely on the exaggerated scream here.

*Mild Spoiler Ahead*
If you know anything about technology, you will not want to watch this. For example, there's a point where these creatures can apparently use cell phones to locate the living (apparently, they have access to CDMA and GSM technology). The heroine stares at her phone and notices the bars as the radio bulletin warns against using computers or cell phones. The monsters appear. But once they get to a *dead zone* the monsters disintegrate. Hmmmm. Do you think you might want to turn your phone OFF??? Now I know where the idea for all those Verizon *dead zone* commercials came from.

The movie also has an oversimplified ending. The solution to the problem is both silly and poorly depicted. Granted the action does pick up above the occasional ghost jumping out at you to startle you. When you finally reach the conclusion, you will probably experience more laughter than dread.

Conclusion

In my humble opinion, this movie was a missed opportunity. If you are just looking for a few hours of mindless fun, this might still do it for you. But if you know anything about how technology works, don't like slow moving movies, don't like dark noir movies and aren't easily startled by ghosts jumping out of nowhere, then this will bore you more than it will scare you. And if you are critical of the many remakes of Japanese horror movies that don't live up to the originals, this probably fits in that group too. Only see this if you have a free rental or it's on cable, but don't buy this DVD till you've seen the movie a few times.

Enjoy. October 4, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...