Customer Reviews

Pulse

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

i saw this movie unfortunately after i saw the remake. the remake doesn't do it justice. while it may move slowly for some american audiences, it was a creepfest galore. it was mildly entertaining until one of the ghosts began whispering for help in japanese. that actor's voice scared the bejeezus out of me!! i had to leave the room, but even then, since by tv had stereo sound, i heard him in the back room! i had never been so glad when my family came home later that day.

Many films have attempted the end of days. Zombie films such as Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys to name a few. All of them have their own story but never had their own Feel. Get Ready for PULSE. A J-horror film to it's own completely that will leave you thinking about the film long after a viewing.

To keep this short and without going into ruining the story for you. This is not like any Asian Horror film you've seen before. It's not for those looking for a gore fest but, those that like artistic films with a message may enjoy this much. It's not so easy to understand but in Japanese culture films don't spoon feed the story to the viewer. This way you get to take away from it what you feel and still (hopefully) understand the story. It's not so hard and you don't have to look far to see the undertone of this film is that we are all living in a world where we are all seperate. There is no sense of community and we are living like ghosts. If you aren't, then you're one of the few who isn't paralized by consumerism and (more importantly) internet. We've never been so connected yet so separate.

I think it's perfect for anyone planning on comparing the American release or who's in the mood for something deep and atmospheric. If you're into Teen horror flix or the famous blood soaked asian shock flix this is not for you. This is unto itself and will pull those viewers with a though process deep inside only to turn you out full of thoughts and urging for a second viewing.

Only dissapointment is the distribution company was so cheap that they FORCE you to watch their previews. If you try to skip them you can't get into the menu. Although the previews were interesting they had nothing to do with the film in any relation and this company will not get another purchase from me unless they had something I definately wanted. The price for the DVD is so high... you should be able to have a working menu if you find the way around those previews. Making the menu not work if you pass around the previews is only an annoyance and is a total shame on the Production company and the studios. I hope the stingy hollywood studios don't catch on to the process because I would honestly stop buying DVDs that perform like this.

Feature presentation 4 STARS
DVD EXTRAS 2 STARS (a little thin/Ok for Asian film)
SUBS -FAILED A LITTLE DELAY! COME ON! $20 DVD!
DVD Transfer 5 STARS Feature Presentation looks great
DVD Production -FAILED (forced previews dud menu if bypassed)

Magnolia DVD Production is the worst of all Asian turn outs. Check companies like TARTAN for QUALITY Films THIS IS NOT WORTH 20$ BUT MAYBE $9.99 IF YOU CAN BUY THE INTERNATIONAL OFFICAL RELEASE MAGNOLIA DOESN'T DESERVE $20 FOR THIS TRANSFER.

I saw the American remake first and was put off the idea of an original. Friends talked me into getting a copy (thank you) and as usual the original film is far and away the better version.

A very disturbing film about ghosts, technology, internet despair, loneliness, and the collapse of society.

Fascinating that special effects can be sparse, but you can have the wits scared out of you by one good professional contortionist. The movie does a great job of playing into visual and auditory notions of right and wrong.

This is an excellent Japanese horror movie. It's thoughtful, creepy, unsettling & very well directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi. On the one hand you have your standard urban horror themes of loneliness & technology-as-villain (in this case computers & the net). On the other there's this speculation about what might be waiting for us 'on the other side.' Is death, as one of the characters wonders aloud at one point, a chance to be reunited with loved ones & so no longer endure the day to day loneliness of life? But as things turn out, being dead is just as miserable & painful an experience for the ghosts as being alive is for the human characters, something Kurosawa demonstrates in a number of genuinely unsettling sequences.

Kiyoshi has an excellent & mature style - demonstrating a preference for long takes (a style that'll drive impatient teen horror fans up the wall) & shocks achieved within the frame rather than through flashy editing. Two sequences epitomise this - in one a young woman searches an apartment for her co-worker in vain while a shadowy figure rises silently from a chair at the back of the room behind her. It might not sound terribly creepy but honestly I think my heart skipped a beat when that happened. In the other - & this is undoubtedly one of the films most talked about moments - a woman jumps to her death & the camera unblinkingly records her fall & impact with no cutting away.

But don't get the idea this is some J-horror gorefest because it isn't. What's so refreshing for me about 'Pulse' is that rather than harping on gore & shocks for two hours the director takes the time to lay out an intriguing story. One in which ghosts are flooding back into our world because there's no more room in theirs. The only trouble being that when ghosts & real people come into physical contact with each other neither can survive (the humans leave behind a smudgy blackened residue which recalls the blast shadows of Hiroshima victims).

Throughout Pulse Kurosawa balances the increasingly apocalyptic imagery of a hi-tech Tokyo in which life has all but ceased with an insistently humanist theme. Our characters clearly care for each other & the story culminates with a small group of survivors setting sail toward an uncertain future. Meanwhile the heroine of the story comes to realise that having found a temporary happiness with the young student who helped her escape she now has the strength to go on.

I'd like to think that's really what Kurosawa is getting at here. Not for him the simple scares of a ghost story, nor the fashionable sense of nihilism (hey, we're all doomed!) which so appeals to moody teens, but the message that in life the small bonds we make with each other, those passing moments of happiness & kindness, these are what shield us from loneliness & enable us to keep going in an unforgiving universe. Seen that way it makes for an appropriate visual metaphor that the final shot of Pulse is a stunning birds-eye view of a tiny shipful of humanity adrift in a vast ocean.

I look forward to seeing more films by Kurosawa Kiyoshi.

One last point: a sequence in Pulse depicts a jetliner seen from street level falling out of the sky & crashing into a building. On the DVD featurette there's a behind-the-scenes glimpse of a location recce for this particular scene. The date? June 2000. Talk about prophetic.

Kairo (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)

While Kiyoshi Kurosawa is no relation to the great Akira Kurosawa, he does seem to be Japan's most likely director, at the present time, to fill the master's shoes. Kairo is another stunning set piece in his arsenal, a worthy successor to Kurosawa's previous films and a fine work in its own right.

Kurosawa's trademark impressionist style haunts this tale of the ghosts in the machine. It follows, alternately, two characters-- Michi (Casshern's Kumiko Aso), a worker at a greenhouse, and Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato), a University student, as they live through an apocalypse about which few people know anything except that it involves people disappearing (or committing suicide) and red duct tape. It seems to be connected to a website called The Forbidden Room, which keeps appearing mysteriously on Kawashima's computer.

Kairo is to Japanese horror film what Akira is to anime; it has become exceptionally well-known in a very short amount of time, but it's probably not the best film for beginners to start off with. While the storyline is linear, it's told in such a piecemeal fashion, leaving a good deal to the viewer's imagination, that those new to the particularly Japanese style of making horror films might find it a bit hard to follow. (This is generally true of Kurosawa's films; his Silence of the Lambs homage, Cure, follows the same general path. Hideo Nakata's best film, Chaos, is another example.) It would be better for the Japanese horror neophyte to start off with Nakata's justly-famous Ring and Dark Water to get a taste of the wonderful atmosphere of Japanese horror before diving into the wonderful world of Kurosawa; that said, his films are a must for any horror film aficionado looking for the cutting edge of the medium. Once you've gotten into the spirit of Japanese horro, get to know Kiyoshi Kurosawa's work. You won't regret it. ****

This is a uniquely Japanese horror movie, with little in the way of gore or jump-out-of-your seat thrills. Instead it slides inexorably into a vision of an apocalyptic world arising not out of atom bombs but alienation. Its perspective is fundamentally existentialist; all but a few of the characters talk about loneliness, how no one can ever be connected to anyone else, the essential isolation of being human -- even after death. This is a starkly horrifying concept in the context of Japanese culture, but might not translate as effectively into horror for American viewers (since we all think we're unconnected individuals already!). Like one of the earlier reviewers, I don't recommend it for neophytes to Japanese horror because the story does seem disconnected -- although it makes sense at the end, there's a lot for your own mind to fill in, which I find to be especially effective, because we'll each fill in our own fear). As the movie moved towards its conclusion, I felt a sense of dread that I haven't felt while watching a horror movie in a long, long time. Not a masterpiece, but a work of philosophic art and profoundly disturbing.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa has accomplished here what American and Japanese directors have been attempting (with little success) for the past decade: to create a horror film with merit that involves the internet, television, or any other virtual vehicle for the spooky. I didn't expect to like this at all because I've grown so disgusted with the kid crawling out of the tv, the kid crawling out of the well, the kid crawling out of both and people turning red/blue/green when people see the kid's face, etc--it was an absurd premise in the first place and the hype surrounding both the original "Ring" and the remake nearly killed the magic both had in advance.

I was wrong. While I don't pretend to completely understand what Kurosawa was trying to say entirely, the painful isolation of modern man is driven home with the aid of technology (computers specifically), and every scene smells of alienation, desolation, and sheer terror. When Taguchi commits suicide in front of Harue it is a statement of sorts, a kind of rejection and revenge upon one more day of a hollow and frightening life which kickstarts an intentional or unintentional metaphysical revolution.

Setting aside the philosophical message, there scenes in this movie so bone-chilling that I can't help but compare it to classics of the genre. When Yabe is stalked and confronted by a figure who seems to sway and jerk with the movement of a dial-up hallucination and he hides under the dresser to avoid his/her gaze, the rest of the sequence is unforgettable.

I imagine this will be received differently by many people. One reviewer mentioned "Carnival of Souls" in comparison, and that is absolutely correct, only this transcends "Carnival of Souls". Absolute masterpiece.

This movie was GREAT! If you've seen the American Version (which I have to give you props for staying awake during that piece of junk) you're missing alot! This movie actually makes sense! It's on my top 10 list of horror movie. You will love it! Check it out!

I love horror movies. Love them. Sometimes though, that love keeps me from enjoying alot of them. I feel I've seen so many that typical scares don't work anymore. Or is it that most movies are so derivative and void of any true desire to unsettle an audince that they really don't work on anyone. Either way, theres nothing more frustrating than going to see a movie that you expect to scare you and realizing that its just more of the same crap. I love either having a good time with a horror movie or being terrified by it and Kairo definatly fits into the latter category.
The story is basically a simple one, ghosts are taking over by using the internet to breach our world. Anyone who encounters one can't take it and kills themselves. Thats pretty much it, on the surface... but the movie has so much more going on for it as far as a statement about how technology is driving us as humans apart, but thats not why we're watching it is it? The main question is, is it scary and I can answer "oh my God yes!"
The first half of the movie adds so many subtle touches and presents scenes that end in jarring scares in such a way that they shock you and make you realize you haven't seen anything like this before. kurosawa knows how to craft a scene that seems to be going nowhere end with a bang, but a quiet one. Thats what got me, the fact that I almost never saw the scares coming and they were so a part of the scenery almost that it really seemed as if Id just seen a ghost, until the first time you actually see one in all its glory creeping towards one of the lead characters. I can truly say I've never seen a ghost in any movie move like that and I don't know that I want to again. Movies like this show whats missing in most big-budget horror movies today,atmosphere and a genuine willingness to unnerve a crowd. The second half however can't hold on to the genuinly terrifying moments of the first, but involves you as the story goes deeper and the characters figure out what is happening to them...and the world. Definatly worth a look and I'd recommend it to own. Tonight being Halloween, you know Im going to show it to people.

The internet becomes the medium of expression for an afterlife of lonely ghosts, spreading a plague of suicide and despair that threatens to depopulate the world. This film follows a pair of young Japanese (Kumiko Aso and Haruhiko Kato) in Tokyo as they deal with these apocalyptic events.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's eerie film, made in the early days of online social networking, suggests that our technology may isolate us more effectively than it brings us together. After all, people speak of "hanging out" in a chat room or online forum, when in reality they have neither left their house nor met another person face to face. Although this theme has relevance everywhere, it may strike a bit closer to home in Japan, which has seen the social phenomenon of the "hikikomori" in recent years. These are young people who do not work or socialize; in fact, they rarely leave their rooms and often maintain contact with the outside world solely through computer. A deeply melancholy atmosphere pervades this disquieting film.