Best movie of this year hands down!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

best movie i've ever seen.

Absolutely brilliant

I first watched this in a cinema while on holiday in Thailand and although I knew nothing about the movie, it looked interesting enough to give it a go and I was not disappointed.A computer hacker unwittingly hacks into the computer of a fellow student who was working on technology to discover alternate frequencies. Unfortunately what he hacked into was also a pathway for spirits and demons to gain access into our world of the living. It sounds like a stupid premise for a film plot, and it kinda is, but for a horror movie it sets a rather interesting chain of events in motion that for me at least, seemed to work.Josh, the computer hacker, is attacked by a spirit and becomes withdrawn. His girlfriend, Mattie, worried about his state of mind, goes to see him. She finds his apartment is unkempt and Josh in a zombie-like state. He walks off and when she goes to look for him she finds that Josh has suddenly hanged himself in the other room. Mattie and her friends start to receive messages from Josh's computer repeatedly asking them for help. This starts her investigation into what he was up to and what has led him to commit such an act.Throughout the movie people start to randomly become withdrawn and display tendencies of no longer caring about themselves or anything around them, including her other friends, until they either suicide or their bodies wither and die leaving nothing but ash. As more and more people end up disappearing the only remedy seems to be to lock yourself away and seal the room with red electrical tape. This has something to do with the colour spectrum and not allowing the spirits to penetrate through that colour.The spirits that find their way through via internet connections, WiFi and any kind of digital signals, prey on the living and literally suck their will to live. Being the spirits of the dead, they seem to draw on the life force of people. The whole things appears to start by way of a viral program that appears on computer screen entitled "do you want to see a ghost". What appears next is a series of images of people that are in a dark and withdrawn state either staring blankly back at the viewer or they are engaged in some form of suicide; and as the movie progresses, you realise that these images are people that have recently succumbed to having their life force drained.Mattie discovers what is going on and with the help of Dex, who had purchased Josh's computer, discover that there was a program developed by Josh that may put an end to the whole thing. Mattie and Dex find the university computer server where it all apparently started and upload the counter virus and the whole system crashes. However after it reboots, the spirits re-emerge and it starts all over again. Their only solution is to get away from the cities and therefore, away from anything that can receive a signal such as mobile phone etc. Essentially this means the world is back in the stone age.Overall I enjoyed this film yet it's not one of those horrors that people will want to see over and over and it did suffer from some inconsistencies which do let it down as they could have been handled better. It's dark, depressing and moody and despite people losing friends and family and multiple suicides happening regularly, people seem to be caught up with their own personal struggle rather than overly worrying or mourning about others. Some people have commented that this doesn't make any sense and the whole movie is stark and lifeless, yet for me it's deliberately allegorical for today's society. How many people do you see these days, with their heads buried in iPhones and iPads, caring more what's happening in the digital world than what's just outside? It's not always noticed when a friend doesn't surface for a few days, so the dark mood and sombre tones are in keeping with the story. Pulse is also the Americanised version of the Japanese film Kairo, which I have since also seen and unlike other awful Americanised movies such as The Eye, I enjoyed Pulse much more than it's Japanese counterpart.There have unfortunately been 2 or 3 sequels to Pulse which were direct to DVD which try to expand on the story, but this was totally unnecessary as Pulse can quite easily be a stand alone film.

Pulse is a remake of a 2000 Japanese horror film of the same name, but after seeing the American remake, I am scared to see the original (and not in the way the filmmakers intended). The movie is so dry and lifeless that it is impossible to get anything but a few minor cheap thrills out of it. Whatever feel the director wanted to extract from this dry film whether it be unease or sorrow I do not think he accomplished. These horror filmmakers are not making it loud and bloody, but quiet and dull. Even slasher flicks have more excitement than this dry piece of boredom. It's as if the director and screenwriter Wes Craven think they are making a Hitchcock film.

Josh (Jonathan Tucker), a computer hacker, breaks into a novelty IT facility, which by pure chance has created a computer virus that invokes the dead. By hacking into the joint Josh unwittingly releases the virus into the world and is soon to become one of the first victims, when an undead phantom steals his lifeforce. His university girlfriend Mattie (Kristen Bell) worried about the lack of contact from Josh decides to visit him at home. There however she only finds a lifeless shell of her boyfriend, who after a short chit chat decides to end his decrepit existence. Preferred suicide: hanging. This however is just the beginning, as the end is the end of the world as we know it...Probably said a bit too much in the intro, but truthfully it won't really matter, as the plot is essentially quite absurd. It either catches on to you or it doesn't. In my case I admire the intention, but must wallop the execution. The script doesn't hold up well to the Japanese original and basically takes on the form of the teenage horror flick with an end of the world twist. Also a lot of the scenes seem forced, especially those with computers turning themselves on or running without power.The biggest no-no is the big finale, where our hero (a random guy called Dexter, who comes to Mattie's aide) has a chance to destroy the contagion by installing a special code made by Josh that would destroy the original programming. This initially works, but soon the system starts rebooting. A logical conclusion would be to try to pull the plug before that happens. But Dexter decides to run...Additionally there is almost total lack of character building with stereotypes being given free reign in the pic. Basically we are rushing through the story until we reach a rather subpar conclusion. But well...Not all is bad. There are scenes that work and the special effects are really adequate to the scare in hand. Here and there you find very nice ideas behind the movie, but just not enough of them to push the film into the 'good zone'.

I find the critic's loathing of Pulse to be a bit of an overstatement. Okay so the film is not very suspenseful, the acting is weak and the ending is silly. Aside from that, I found Pulse fairly intriguing. I can't say I've seen a plot similar to this, but maybe I haven't seen enough ghost stories. It is weird, twisted and kind of freaky. The last act of the film is especially bleak and spooky, with a strange little cameo from Brad Dourif, who some might recognize from Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers, and TV goers will know him as the doctor from Deadwood. I mentioned that the film seems creative and unique, but if I thought about it for a while, I'm sure I'd be able to come up with a number of films which this either borrows from or directly resembles. Although labeled as a bad movie, Pulse can still be enjoyed by horror fans. Just do not expect to be scared out of your pants. If you approach the film that way, than yes, you may be disappointed. I didn't know what to expect when I approached Pulse, but what I saw didn't disappoint me.