#689 – Pulse (2006)

Pulse (2006)

Film review #689

Director: Jim Sonzero

SYNOPSIS: A group of college students are trying to come to terms with why their friend Josh ended his own life, when they start getting messages from him from beyond the grave. They learn he was working on some sort of project that seems to have unleashed horrors that are draining people of their will to live, and must find a way to stop the epidemic.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Pulse is a 2006 sci-fi horror film and a remake of the 2001 Japanese film of the same name. The film sees people drained of their will to live by weird creatures that live in computers, and one such person is Josh, a college student who ends his own life. His girlfriend Mattie and their friends try to understand why he did it, when they start receiving messages from his computer. Mattie learns that his landlady sold the computer to a man named Dex, who discovers on the computer that Josh was working on a project that has drawn the attention of mysterious being, that seem to be draining people of their will to live. While there’s something interesting about a wireless signal that brings with it strange entities, the script is a mess and fails to really get a grasp of the concept. I’ve not seen the original 2001 film this is based off (yet) but it has to be better than this. The whole idea of “hacking into frequencies we didn’t even know about” is just a really silly premise, and while the film obviously isn’t focused on the sci-fi element, it still needs some sort of backbone for the horrors to abide by, and the rules just aren’t made clear. There’s an element of the plot that people who have encountered these monsters are appearing on some webcam footage on people’s computers or something, but it never plays a part in the story or is dealt with in any way; it just seems to be of consequence. There’s just so much in this film which doesn’t matter.

As a horror film, the film presents very few actual scares, and doesn’t really create any kind of atmosphere as Mattie is wandering about all over the place, interacting with characters which are ill-defined and serve no real purpose. they learn that some sort of red tape helps keep the monsters keeps the monsters out; assumingly it blocks radio signals or something, but it’s never explained. An encounter with the beings also gives people some sort of infectious disease which causes them to turn to dust or something alongside sapping their will to live, which is again just confusing and a bit silly. The film moves to a finale in which society breaks down, planes fall from the sky etc. and Mattie and Dex have to upload a virus at the computer centre, which surprisingly doesn’t work, making that whole plot a bit meaningless. They escape to an area with no mobile phone signal so they can rest, only for Mattie to realise that she has her mobile phone with her and that they can get through the phone? Shouldn’t that have been obvious? Why would she still have her phone with her? For a psychological horror film, going the whole post-apocalypse route for the finale really feels out of place, and overshadows any of the more nuanced elements of the film (not that there were many). The rather plain effects are obscured behind grainy webcam footage mostly, and the creatures themselves are a bit plain. The most annoying part of the production is that there’s a blue colour filter over almost the entire film, which is massively distracting and wholly unnecessary. Pulse fails to engage on any level at all: the script is weak, the horror element is limited to a few jumpscares, the characters are bland, and the pivot to a different tone in the finale leaves very little impression by the end. I can only help the original is better.