The 2001 Japanese horror film "Pulse" is dark. Literally, dark. So dark it's often hard to see exactly what is driving young person after young person out of their minds, eventually eviscerating much of Tokyo. Perhaps the filmmakers hoped to play on fear of isolation and the unknown. Instead, I just ended up squinting and swearing, frustrated I couldn't see the very thing that was supposed to make me scream.
Later remade Stateside in 2006 with Kristen Bell, "Pulse" follows a group of college students devastated when one of their own inexplicably commits suicide - while the protagonist looks on in horror. Soon after, the dead man's visage and voice surface over the phone and on this wacky contraption called the Internet, which a fellow student has just set up in his room. Is it a ghost, or some sort of evil force that sets its sights on possessing all of Tokyo?
Even ten minutes in, I was hard pressed to care.
Again, too much dark makes the critic go blind. Also, the overarching theme of isolation in an increasingly technology-heavy world, as I recall, felt dated even in 2001 and definitely doesn't hold up now. Maybe in 1996 it would have been effective.
I wanted to like "Pulse." Surely any foreign-language film deserving of an American remake (even a badly-reviewed one) would be a fairly solid watch. To be fair, I did want to go the way of the first suicide victim, many times. But rather than write "help me" on my apartment walls and stare gloomily at yet another clunky computer screen, I told a joke and watched E! instead.
"Pulse" is being re-released May 4 by Magnolia Entertainment as part of a "Horror Two-Pack" which includes a campy Thai bloodbath entitled "Sick Nurses." No other special features.