Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 J-horror film Pulse (or Kairo, which translates to “Circuit”) operates on two levels: 1) on the atmospheric level, stemming from the film’s mis-en-scene and sound design, creating a fully distinct audiovisual world from pure “vibes,” and 2) as a traditional genre story, since it presents a baffling mystery involving two separate plots which will purportedly be unveiled over the course of its telling.
Pulse succeeds with the first of these, and fails with the other. Its achievements, however, while not enough to completely rescue the film from its (more or less) mid-tier quality, were enough to earn it the status of cult classic upon its release. There are a number of memorable scenes—including what may be, according to one reviewer, the signature sequence in all of J-horror—and an overall aura that believably captures the anxiety over what was fairly new technology at the time: the Internet, and all its attendant dangers, particularly that of mass social alienation.
Pulse is a ghost story, but calling it a ghost story would be to, in a way, undersell the film; at least in terms of its ultimate scope, which widens out from a tight-knit circle of friends in the Kantō region of Japan to eventually encompass the whole world. This enlargement is ambitious but also turns out to be Pulse‘s weakness, as its eeriness is most effective when confined primarily to the situation of the main characters. Like many intriguing mysteries, the payoff turns out to be less compelling than the mystery itself.
It begins with the absence of a young man, Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi), from his friend group while he is working on an unnamed project. One of the friends, Michi (Kumiko Asō), goes to check in on him at his apartment. She finds him there amiable yet also strangely detached; and after she retrieves the disk from his work desk, Michi sees that he has hanged himself in the next room.
His friends are stunned. Taguchi had never expressed suicidal thoughts before. Whatever happened, however, seems to be related to the computer disk Taguchi was working on prior to his death. Investigation yields disturbing imagery: Taguchi is onscreen, turned away from the camera, standing ominously still by his work desk; and his reflection in the computer screen is that of a child’s visage, eyeless and pale.
In a different part of the city, we meet Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato), an economics student at the local university, who on a whim decides to access the Internet, with which he is largely unfamiliar. His computer, however, inexplicably takes him to a website where one is shown a series of different individuals in their bedrooms, all in various states of forlorn isolation. (Unbeknownst to Kawashima, very similar to the images shown on Taguchi’s disk.) Perturbed, he signs out—only for the program to keep opening itself up on his computer, seemingly through its own volition.
People start killing themselves, and then vanishing, leaving behind only a mold-like stain where their corpses were. Throughout town, there appear several rooms cordoned off by red tape, which are labelled Forbidden. One enters these rooms at their own peril, for what awaits inside spells doom…
As Kawashima and Michi’s storylines converge, the meaning of these events will, in some respects, be answered; but the extent to which these answers provide any practical use for both Pulse‘s characters and its viewers is decidedly less clear. Of course, on one level, to demand clarification from a film on every single front is antithetical to critical evaluation itself, as most good works leave just enough space in its ambiguities for an attentive viewer to reliably intuit their purpose(s). But there are certain demands made by art that beg to be satisfied, especially if the resolution of specific plot-related intrigues is part and parcel of the story’s narrative drive.
Pulse, though, seems to almost hand-wave away these demands, dispensing with its explanation(s) in a single scene where a hitherto-unknown character swoops in out of the blue to info-dump about the strange afterlife-Internet connection that seems to be causing an epidemic of despair, as well as the overwhelming loneliness of ghosts. Then, cue the apocalypse.
Pulse‘s characters are also not very compelling at all, and by the time their rather banal lives are truly at stake, too much time has been spent on building up eerie intrigue for the viewer to genuinely care about their survival, much less any deeper desires and/or anxieties they may possess, which are either vented explicitly and then never further explored or kept in the dark.
So the plot is ultimately unsatisfying and the characters largely uninteresting—which all stem from the script, penned by Kurosawa himself. Normally such demerits result in artistic sub-mediocrity, or worse. Thankfully, however, Kurosawa’s talents as a director far outstrip his screenwriting capabilities, for Pulse really is buoyed by pretty much every other element of the filmmaking (minus some badly dated CGI, particularly near the end).
As outright horror, the film is a clinic in slowly stoking suspense, and in delivering its thrills without cheap jump-scares. But like the best horror, Pulse wisely traffics less in those kinds of thrills (a far easier task for genre practitioners) than it does in gradually evoking a sense of dread.
This is generated first from the very look of the film, as Jun’ichirô Hayashi’s cinematography seems leached of brightness, simultaneously isolating the appearance of brighter colors (as respite from the surrounding drabness, perhaps; particularly as it relates to the outfits of certain characters) and flattening their aesthetic effect. This is a world already overcome by the virtual, by that which exists one step removed from the real, appearing almost as low-definition as that which stares out from those specter-infected screens.
The editing of Junichi Kikuchi is quite good (effectively mixing both long takes and jump-cuts when appropriate) as is the eerily atmospheric score of Takefumi Haketa. And the cast are welcomely serviceable, as the vacuousness of Kurosawa’s dialogue does them no favors. All of the film’s technical elements reach an apex, however, in the scene referred to in this review’s opening—easily Pulse‘s most memorable moment—when one of Taguchi’s friends, Yabe (Masatoshi Matsuo) encounters a spirit after he enters a Forbidden Room.
Everything, from the stark, almost Expressionistic lighting, to the perfect choice of silence gradually filled in with a whining drone and Ligetian wails, is tuned to perfection. The spirit’s slowness downright teases the viewer’s fight-or-flight response, and even the one quasi-jump-scare is tempered by Kurosawa taking his time even there, allowing the visage plenty of time to unveil its horror. Death’s inevitability has never been so balletically disturbing.
As far as Pulse‘s commentary regarding the Internet, one would be hard-pressed to not see similarities between it and our contemporary ills. Instantaneous connection engendering social isolation rather than harmony, the slow replacement of reality by virtual, bloodless processes. The mentally ill taking their own lives at the encouragement of AI chatbots; disembodied messages in the guise of—or seeking—agency at the expense of another’s. In this respect, the prescience of Pulse takes precedence over its many flaws, although its warnings, sent at the dawn of the new millennium, may be too little, too late…
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