Last week, my secondary level students were tasked to write an essay on the pros and cons of allowing young children access to the internet. I should have shown them Pulse (2001) because it would have proffered the mother of all disadvantages of allowing kids full access to the internet.
What if there is an evil entity behind the computer screen and it prompts you to click on YES so it can come out to “play” with you. Pulse gives new meaning to the phrase “ghost in the machine.” That’s what I will say about the plot and nothing else.
Like all good ghost stories, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa sets a trap for its protagonist, with a computer that does its own internet dial-up and a website that is haunted. We are drawn to the website like our curious protagonists, which looks like the site of a bloody accident. We know we will have nightmares but our eyes and our entire being are wedded to it and we want the protagonists to click on YES. They will die, but at least they would have seen the infinite void of sheer terror.
Pulse’s has an interesting subtext – what if the internet is not just a gateway to infinite knowledge and the merging of global hamlets, but a doorway to another world filled with lonely ghouls? What if instead of making the world smaller, it actually makes you feel isolated? Kurosawa’s choice of aesthetics and stylistics throughout the film underscores isolation, with characters often espied through wafting curtains and even through the POV of the computer screen. The individuals’ dislocation with reality is made all the more palpable when they are being exploited while relishing in the nascent online community. The sense of dread feels real and the spine-chilling imagery seems to have been extracted from the subconscious of a neurotic nebbish.
Kurosawa gives you just enough information to let you figure out what’s going on and then pulls the carpet from right under your feet by doing a sharp turn and head on into an apocalyptic cine-scape. The theme of the film remains oblique, the characters are vaguely drawn and the narrative lacks clarity, but therein lies its devilish charm – everything and everyone seem to work on dream logic. None of the characters stand out and my guess is that you would not be emotionally tethered to them, but you will be counting the moments they are CTRL-ALT-DEL from the face of the earth. Chances are, you will remember their shocking demise even if you want to forget them. I for one will never forget how the ghouls move and how the victims spout some disturbing melancholia before they are gone.
Pulse could do with some paring down from a 2-hour runtime which causes the middle act to sag, but it definitely belongs in the pantheon of great J-horror films. If The Ring (1998) made me not want to watch TV alone at night; if Ju-on (2002) made me not want to wash my hair, then Pulse made me wary of clicking on YES.
Written by Daniel Chiam
BookMyShow Singapore 
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