"...once the system's complete, it'll function on its own and become permanent."

Unbelievable. I need to watch it again, but certainty one of the seminal films of the 21st Century. Indeed a very digital ghost story, one which encourages us to reflect on the new spaces which have been created or transformed since 2000. People interact with computer screens, televisions...but rarely ever phones. Perhaps because there is no screen (or wasn't really in 2001) for a telephone? It's very interesting and telling that the movie's near-climax (only because the movie takes a sudden, very unexpected shift following which I'm still struggling to make sense out of) is in an abandoned factory, an analogue space, and one where ghosts exist in.…

I think the first thing I said to my friend Alex Enquist as I left the theater was that this was “the most Bordwellian movie ever made.” I don’t think the film has that much to say about our relationship to technology – it’s more of a gimmick to get the plot going (essentially Swimfan but never annoyingly so), but so perfectly constructed, where each shot leads into the next shot. Kurosawa jumps 180 degree lines, re-organizes the space of a scene via shots that feel unnecessary and bring us out of the action on screen, and then suddenly it becomes obvious as new information emerges into the frame. This can either be for horror (aka ghoooooooossssssts) or even comedy…

Another example of the skill of Japanese directors in creating atmospheres within a film that provide the viewer with a far greater dread than any amount of CGI severed limbs and gore can ever provide.

There's a sense of dislocation that runs throughout this film - none of the characters seem to be anchored in the moment, they appear to float through scenes as if they were already ghosts or spirits and the dialogue is largely superficial.

Kurowasa takes the viewer by the hand and introduces them to a world where the dead walk freely among us and (literal) red tape is used to keep them at arms length. Having made that leap he then asks us to accept that…

Extends the insular nature of ghost stories to their inhabitants' emotional states, using languorous pacing and an anonymous milieu that evaporates before your eyes to leave two disparate strangers with only each other to gravitate toward. Kiyoshi's camerawork is exacting and evocative, largely shooting scenes in surveillance-style tracking shots that follow people's movement through a space. But when Kawashima and Michi finally meet, the camera pans from one to the other in a motion that's unmistakably fatalistic, unmotivated by their actions, yet reflective of their desperate longing for communion. Close-ups are deployed sparingly, mostly reserved for brushes with the supernatural, which elicit awe and terror from their victims. From my memory, these instances mark the only adoptions of traditional shot/reverse-shot…

“Pulse” isn’t the easiest or most enjoyable horror movie, but it has a lot to say about the Internet, loneliness, and depression. While other horror movies like “The Ring” have addressed the potential for danger in media and technology, “Pulse” is the first to specifically locate that threat in the Internet. While its depiction of ghosts gets scary at certain moments, the film’s horror doesn’t come from blood, guts, or monsters. Instead, Kurosawa’s focusing specifically on despair, depression, hopelessness, and the experience of witnessing someone close to you undergo those feelings. While “Pulse” was released in 2001 and features some very early computer models, it manages to predict many of the drawbacks to our current Internet-obsessed culture. While the invention…

79/100 (B+)

More accurately: First half = Phenomenal, Second half = Incoherent. Can honestly say the first hour or so of Kurosawa's Pulse is some of the strangest, freakiest horror this side of David Lynch. The most famous moment (the woman walking across the room) uses inhuman movements, tense sound design, and expert lighting to replicate a nightmare, while the long take involving a woman jumping off a roof is just staggering. Though I understood little of the narrative, it didn't really matter when the atmosphere was literally as close to a waking dream as any film I can remember.

However, I really didn't care all that much for the second half. I know the characters are deliberately thinly-drawn to…