Pulse

We went to see PULSE yesterday afternoon (got to the theater too late for DESCENT). I have not seen the original KAIRO for comparison. So, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen, and not the best. Yes, it was slow to start and get to the point. But IMO it had a creepy, dark atmosphere (god, if I lived there I'd want to commit suicide in any case), the visuals weren't bad, and it had a few good scares. Unfortunately, it also depended on VOLUME to enhance the scare. If you're more of a gore fan, then it's probably not the movie for you. The movie may not be worth the price of a ticket, but I think it's worth a rental. Eh, I'm just your average moviegoer and don't watch movies to analyze them to death. I even liked The Grudge. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Years ago when Wes Craven was still attached to direct this American remake of the almost perfect Japanese thriller, I was quite excited to see it. Seeing as Craven had never made a bad movie (except for the Hills Have Eyes sequel, which was taken away from him), I thought it would be great. Unexpectedly, the project was canceled when Bob Weinstein thought it was too similar to THE RING and sent Craven to work on the disastrous CURSED instead. Eventually Weinstein found a way to make a cheaper, ultra dumbed down version of PULSE, completely scraping any intelligence left in Craven's original screenplay (he still maintains a writing credit, which Craven says does not reflect his work). The result is one of the top five worst horror movies ever made. A complete and total insult to anyone who pays money to watch it. This made-for-teens only abomination represents everything that is wrong with the horror genre today: over-explanation to the point of aggravation (the producers must think we are brain-dead as an audience), the casting of pop stars instead of actual actors (Christina Milian), and cookie-cutter editing due the number of times the picture was re-edited and re-shot to get a PG-13 rating. Even Kristen Bell, great on "Veronica Mars", seems bored here. You will be too if you make the mistake of watching this. It's ironic that a movie called PULSE doesn't have one. 0/10.

We just came home from seeing Pulse. Sorry friends, this is one film you won't be sorry you missed. Slow, boring, and lots of loose ends. No thrills, chills or characters you can care about. You are presented with a group of close friends -- yet no one seems concerned or even to notice that one of their buddies hasn't been around, anywhere, for a few days. No one seems to care when his fate is discovered. For some reason, all the college students seem to reside in apartments with black walls and leave food scattered all over the place to rot. I'm guessing the props dept had a lot of bugs around and wanted to use them up. Better to wait until this film shows up on cable at 3 am and you have nothing better to do before you watch this one.

I went to see Pulse knowing it was PG13, so I didn't expect much gore, but couldn't the writer of this story at least have done something more with it?

Pulse is a movie about a hacker who releases a strange computer virus which immediately affects computers everywhere as well as cell phones and even TV screens. We soon find out that the virus is really the dead who have found a way to return to the living world. What they want is the life force of every living being. So it is up to our heroes to try and find a way to stop them before they can consume the entire world.

That's the plot which in my opinion was a rather clever idea. Too bad that the story makes very little sense and is filled with implausibilities that go against the very story that the writer and director were trying to get across. I won't explained these because of the spoilers that would be involved. Of course there aren't many spoilers anyway, since the commercials give much of it away.

The acting was decent, and some of the visuals were nice, but there is very little suspense. This is more of a simple shock film like so many other horror movies that have been filling our theaters for about three years. There is one horror movie that is the exception, and that is The Descent which was released last week. If you want to see one of the best horror movies in the past couple years, go see that one instead and forget about Pulse.

I think this movie rocks! I think it's one of the scariest movies of the year. I just don't get why people hate 'Pulse' so much. But I think I know why. I think people watched the preview, and it seemed like it had a pretty good storyline. And then when they watched the movie, it had a totally different storyline than they thought it would have.

I'll admit, when I saw the preview, it did look scarier than the movie. But the preview left a lot of stuff out that the movie didn't have. It's hard to explain, but once you see the movie, you'll know what I mean.

'Pulse' is a very chilling film that is about the dead finding a portal in computers, cell phones, etc., into our world. And because of this plot line, people might get scared of their own computers and cell phones. I think that's a really good way to scare people because instead of 'Pulse' having lots of jump-out-at-you surprises (which by the way, it does), it has a way of scaring people in real life.

I'm just surprised they didn't think of televisions as portals for the dead to get through. The only things mentioned and seen in the movie for the dead to get through from were computers and cell phones.

'Pulse' is full of jump-out-at-you scares and other kinds of surprises that make your mouth fly open in shock. Each scare kept eclipsing the last and each thrill kept eclipsing the last, too.

All in all, 'Pulse' is a very chilling movie that is well...chilling.

Oh, and when you read the back of the DVD, at the end of the summary, it says 'astonishing surprise ending', or something like that, but I know it said surprise ending. Well, the ending isn't really that surprising. But, to see an astonishing ending, read this tips:

1. Go to the special features menu on the 'Pulse' DVD.

2. Go to Deleted/Alternate scenes.

(MINOR SPOILER HERE):

3. Go to the 'Dexter Dies' deleted/alternate scene.

(MINOR SPOILER ENDS)

4. Enjoy the deleted/alternate surprise ending.

I don't know why the filmmakers didn't keep the scene there. The ending would have been so much better.

My MPAA rating: PG-13: Intense Sequences of Sci-Fi Terror, Deeply Disturbing Images, Language, Some Brief Sensuality, and Thematic Material

My Canadian rating: 14A: Frightening Scenes, Disturbing Content, Mature Themes