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Pulse is an American film released on August 11, 2006, based on the 2001 Japanese horror film Kairo directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It stars Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, and Christina Milian. The Weinstein Company distributed the film in the United States through its Dimension Films label. Neo Art & Logic produced the film and Jim Sonzero directed the script written by Wes Craven and Ray Wright. The film's release date was originally March 3rd, but was ultimately moved to August 11.
StorySpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Pulse opens with twenty-something Josh entering a dark university library intending to meet a Douglas Zieglar. There he is attacked by a humanoid spirit that sucks the life force out of him.
Back at university, Mattie and her friends begin to chat online. Suddenly, they begin to receive text messages from Josh, which say "Help me.". Assuming that Josh's computer is still on and there is a virus creating the messages, Mattie's friend Stone agrees to disconnect the computer at Josh's apartment. He finds though, that the computer is gone. Hearing noises, he enters a bedroom and finds a window that has red tape over the entire glass in the window. The door slams shut and a female spirit steps out from the shadows. Stone hides behind a bed, thinking he is safe. But when he looks up, he sees the sickly pale face of the female spirit looking back down at him over the edge of the bed. Stone screams. Mattie continues to receive messages from Josh and visits his apartment once more. There she learns that the building superintendent has sold Josh's computer to a young man named Dexter McCarthy. Mattie visits Dexter and blames him for the messages, but he shows her that the computer is locked in the trunk of his car. After Mattie leaves Dexter, he connects the pc together. When it starts, it asks the question: "Do you want to meet a ghost?" The screen displays one web cam scene after another of strange and contorted people, many of whom are committing suicide, who seem to be staring back at Dex through the screen. Mattie receives a package that Josh mailed two days before he died. Inside are rolls of red tape and a message that says "It keeps them out. Don't know why. -J". Later on, Dexter finds Mattie and shows her video messages Josh was sending to Douglas Zieglar. Josh had hacked Zieglar's computer system and stolen and distributed a virus. This virus had released or unlocked a portal that connected the realm of the living, to the realm of the dead. Josh believed he had coded a counter to the virus and wanted to meet Zieglar at the library. As well Dex finds Josh's work on a memory stick taped inside the PC case with the same red tape.
Later that night, Mattie's roommate Izzie is down in the laundry room. She is putting some of her dirty clothes in the washing machine, and suddenly the door at the end of the room closes by itself, and the door to a dryer machine swings open. Then the wet clothes begins to "plop" on the floor, seemingly thrown out from the inside. Izzie walks over to investigate, and a spirit with four arms pops out and steals her life force. Later, Mattie returns home and looks for Izzie. She finds her in her room, covered in unsightly black bruises. They both sit down on the couch and Mattie asks "What do they want?" to which Izzie responds, "They want what they don't have anymore. They want life." Then Izzie stands up and says "It's time." She evaporates into a cloud of black ash and is blown out the window. Mattie, frightened, runs out of her apartment and goes to meet up with Dex again. Dex and Mattie visit Zieglar, knocking the door in. They find the entire room plastered in red tape. Zieglar tells them of a project he worked on for wide-band Internet access and telecommunication purposes. Zieglar found "frequencies no one knew existed." Opening these frequencies somehow allowed the evil entities to travel to our world. He tells Mattie and Dex that the main server is in the basement. Leaving Zieglar in his room, they go to the basement and Dex uploads Josh's "fix." It causes the system to crash and the entities vanish, but moments later the system reboots and the ghosts return. They barely escape the entities that are chasing them throughout the building. Once outside, a passenger jet plane crashes into the building they were just in. Dexter sees an abandoned beat-up old truck and calls Mattie over. They escape the area in the truck. They pull over to sleep, and Mattie is awakened by a radio report from the army announcing the location of several "safe-zones" where there is no Internet, cell phones, or television. The safe zones are made in blackout areas. The announcement says to get rid of cell phones, PDAs and other electronic communication devices, and Mattie looks up to see her cell phone on the dash. She opens it and sees she still is receiving a signal. Then she and Dex are attacked one more time by a few more restless ghosts, but start driving, and when Mattie's cell loses coverage, the entities disappear. They continue to drive towards the safe-zone. The film concludes with a voice-over from Mattie describing how, despite the Internet bringing people together, it actually tore people apart to the point where cities and modern technology were forced to be abandoned. The last clips show them arriving at a large military refugee camp and views of Josh's ghost in a window at the abandoned city. Spoilers end here.
Production and promotionThe teaser trailer for Pulse actually features footage from the original Japanese film, Kairo. One shot in particular features a large falling military plane crashing into a building. The plane crash sequence was entirely remade for the U.S. release, and features a passenger plane crashing on top of a building instead of a military plane. Also, in several versions of the trailer, it shows a man jumping off a large factory tower, but this scene only appeared in the unrated DVD version of the film, as an example of the many suicides. There is a dream sequence where Mattie is talking to Josh on top of a tower. The unrated 90-minute DVD version came out on December 5, along with the PG-13 fullscreen version. MPAA ratingPG-13 for Intense Sequences of Sci-Fi Terror, Disturbing Images, Language, Sensuality and Thematic Material. Certain shots had to be cut and scenes had to be trimmed to obtain a "PG-13" rating - namely the scene of Josh's suicide. Box officeThe film grossed an estimated $8,456,000 in its opening weekend (August 11-13, 2006) in the United States and Canada. At its close on October 12, 2006 the film had grossed a total of $20,264,536 domestically. Foreign box office was $7,643,127, for a worldwide take of $27,907,563, as compared to a production budget of approximately $20,500,000.[1] As a DVD rental the film has grossed another $25.01 million in revenue.[2] ReceptionPulse critically flopped receiving an aggregate score of 14% at Rotten Tomatoes.[1] Critics commented on perceived missing social commentary in the American version, which they saw as resulting in nothing more than a series of scares created for the purpose of shock value.[2] Taglines
Cast
Differences between Kairo & PulseThis film is different from the original in many ways. The Japanese original focuses on society and questions about both suicide and the end of the world, specifically the belief that death and the afterlife are nothing but eternal loneliness. The American remake's focus is technology and bringing the dead back through a new form of communication, focusing on the phenomenon of Instrumental TransCommunication. It has little plot relation to the original movie, instead creating its own story and using scare elements of its original.
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