Pulse: How I Learned to Stop and Love the Internet

If Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 critically acclaimed cult classic Pulse (known in Japan as Kairo) is on your watchlist, maybe cue up something a bit more lighthearted as a palate cleanse for the post-show unwinding. Consider making some plans with friends. Or, shit, when was the last time you called your mom?

Pulse’s horror lies not in what’s around the corner literally, but rather what’s around the corner metaphorically. The film follows the stories of two twenty-something strangers, Michi and Ryosuke, who have both begun witnessing strange deaths and mysterious happenings. Michi has a completely normal conversation with her coworker in his own home seconds before he hangs himself in the next room. Ryosuke just installed the Internet on his computer for the first time, which is as ridiculous of a sentence to type as it is to read. His computer begins turning itself on at random times (always to the laughably technophobic Ryosuke’s dismay) and pulling up a hella sketchy video chat that promises to connect its users with the dead.

This movie was okay. Hardcore scare fans will probably be bored by it, but Pulse flawlessly accomplishes exactly what it set out to do: depress the Prozac out of anyone and everyone who takes the time to watch it. Its basic premise boils down to this: ghosts aren’t scary because they can hurt you (in the movie’s universe they can’t, despite being able to slightly manipulate tangible objects) but because they possess the singular sorrowful truth that death is nothing but being gut-wrenchingly, eternally alone, though we’re still not sure why knowledge of that truth would make anyone more eager to break on through to the other side.

Contradictory suicide logic aside, the film does a decent bit of analysis on what it means to be alone in an age of ubiquitous connection, but does nothing to offer a conclusion in regards to that analysis. Despite both Ryosuke’s and Michi’s efforts to take care of their loved ones, promising never to leave them alone, it still isn’t enough to save any of them. The Tokyo in which this film takes place is desolate. Even before the onset of the apocalyptic happenings, everything seems on the verge of crumbling to dust. The sky is constantly overcast, resulting in an overall chilly atmosphere. I watched it wrapped in sweatpants and a blanket and had an overwhelming craving for hot chocolate. This film makes you feel the way I assume a run-in with a dementor would.

In terms of lady representation, this film does a pretty okay job. One of the main relationships on which it focuses is that of Michi and her friend Junko. Junko begins the film as an upbeat, girlish, happy go lucky type. These traits are never depicted negatively, which is nice, but honestly most of the characters in this film are sort of static and lackluster. After an encounter with a spirit in a red taped room, Junko goes into shock, it turns either nonresponsive or hysterical. Michi takes her friend and colleague in, allowing her to stay with her and even feeding her. For all of her love and nurturing, Junko is still despondent, remarking that she would simply live in eternal loneliness before literally just dissolving into the wall, leaving a grease spot where she stood. You read all of that right. She just gets disgustingly absorbed right into the wall. While this could be a commentary on the nature of actual depression and how despite how much we try we cannot simply will someone out of a mental illness, its presentation makes the moment seem more like a thoughtless twist of the knife that is the absurdity and nihilism of this movie.

“Ha ha. You only thought the message of this film was the importance of human compassion.” – Kurosawa, probably.

Ryosuke isn’t any more successful, promising his computer science companion/love interest Harue he’ll never leave her side if only so that the two of them don’t have to be alone forever (charming). The two get on a subway train together only for her to start freaking right the fuck out and running back home, despite everything we’ve ever learned about people splitting up in horror movies. Ryosuke searches for Harue at her home and the computer lab at school before eventually running into Michi, whose car has broken down and who has all but given up. Ryosuke, the boy who literally had to write down instructions for pushing the “print screen” button earlier in the film, fixes her car and the two go off on their merry way to hunt down Ryosuke’s not girlfriend. They find her in a warehouse, where she shoots herself in the head, although the no blood and no bullet wound would suggest maybe she like… faked it but died in real life anyway? The film goes to no trouble to hide this, which makes Ryosuke’s bemoaning that he couldn’t save her all the more comical. When Michi and Ryosuke make it back to the car, they realize Michi is out of gas. Ryosuke tells her he saw gas inside and he’ll be right back, thus breaking Holy Commandment No. 4 of surviving a horror movie, so we know he’s donezo. After a run-in with a genuinely terrifying ghost-blur, Ryosuke becomes the proverbial dog refusing to eat for four days before crawling under the porch to die. Michi literally carries him to a rescue ship where he, surprise, spontaneously dissolves into ashes anyway.

Michi could have been a really cool example by demonstrating how traits classically viewed as feminine can also be super badass. She stops at nothing to make sure people are taken care of, but her efforts prove about as useful as a pedal powered wheelchair. This film could have said anything actually useful about human connection, but it opted not to. And as my mother’s ex husband used to say, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas. Now, I have no clue what he was trying to say, but I don’t really know what this movie was trying to say either, so I guess it still applies. Alternate suggestions include David Bruckner’s The Signal for the same dose of technophobia, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows to keep the desolate atmosphere but upgrade your human connection message, or if you’re still dead set on getting good and despondent, Requiem for a Dream should do nicely.