Pulse (Kairo) (2001)
Cast: Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Kato, Jun Fubuki,
Director: Kiyoshi Kurasawa
Synopsis: A mysterious website and a wave of suicides... creepy and effective chiller
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

“We float around the universe like little dots…isolated and drifting around alone and aimlessly….Whenever we get too close to another dot, one consumes the other - and so it's safer to remain at a reasonable distance from all other dots”

Thus being the assumption of a project by one of the graduate students at a computer lab in the film Pulse which encapsulates essentially what this twisted little sort-of ghost story is all about. Confused?…read on.

The film introduces us to a group of young botanists working at a rooftop greenhouse somewhere in Tokyo who are worried about a friend who has recently seemed listless and aloof and who has not showed up for work with an important and overdue assignment. His colleagues, especially the female ones are worried and one of them goes to check out the missing colleagues’ apartment. She finds her friend behaving rather strangely and moments later he slips into an adjacent room to be found dead with a noose around his neck.

Meanwhile elsewhere a young student, not at all computer savvy, attempts to investigate the internet one night and seems to be getting totally lost before he hits a button on the keyboard and all of a sudden is automatically connected and taken to a website which begins to show some very bizarre web cam images of some seriously disturbed and depressed looking individuals. Then the site asks “do you want to meet a ghost” at which point young Kawashima freaks out and turns off his PC. Later the next day when he awakens he finds the very website beckoning him if he would like to meet a ghost! Rightfully he finds this all very bizarre and heads for the computer department at his college where he hopes he might find some answers. There he meets a young computer trainee Harue who is genuinely interested in hearing about this weird website that Kawashima encountered.

Back at the greenhouse, one by one, mysteriously the workforce is being whittled away and indeed it transpires that the entire city is suffering from a mounting toll of suicides and missing persons. Soon the news at night consists of a roll call of all those who are missing and it goes on and on and on. There is an epidemic of people feeling alienated, isolated and depressed who are simply fading away, leaving behind mysterious dark blotches as a fleeting reminder of their sad existence. But what is the connection between the mysterious website that beckons browsers to their doom and is there any credence to one of the theories put forward by a student who claims that Tokyo is being infested by the spirits of dead people who have found rather like in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead that “when there is no more room left in hell, the dead will walk the earth” or something to that effect! Or maybe Harue’s theory that there is a very fine line between death and loneliness may have a point.

This film arrives in the wake of Nakata Hideo’s magnificently chilling Ring and shares much of the same ground as that film with its emphasis on ghostly apparitions, disgruntled and restless spirits, alienation and of course the use of modern technology to “transmit” evil – in this case a malevolent, deadly website. The film has a healthy sprinkling of very creepy scenes a la Ring though to its credit doesn't smack of rip-off. There is one stunning scene in particular when Harue decides to take the plunge and “meet a ghost” on the website only to find the site change to a web cam image of somebody she least expected to see! There are also chilling ghostly phone calls where voices ask repeatedly and robotically for “Help”. Also like Ring, the film boasts some excellent sound effects and the soundtrack is masterfully crafted for maximum creepiness and helps the film create its netherworld infested by soulless, sad, disgruntled and homeless spirits.

Lacking the memorable breathtaking finale that elevated Ring to classic status this none the less is very successful in creating its own suffocating atmosphere of edgy horror and slowly but inexorably mounting terror. Though the film may have been swamped by the success of and attention showered upon the Ring films it is certainly a highly impressive and effective entity on its own and those who enjoyed the Nakata classic should not be disappointed by this disturbing, edgy and often very frightening chiller.