Horror Movie of the Day: Pulse (Kairo, 2001)
Solitude, the modern plague wrecking the world. Hikikomori (ひきこもり) is a Japanese word to describe social shut ins, and it’s suspected to be a problem exacerbated through the evolution of new technologies. So ironically enough, despite the world being more connected than ever some people can die completely alone and no one would know.
Michi Kudo has recently started working in a plant shop. She feels something wrong about her coworker Taguchi, who has been absent for a few days while working on a floppy. Going to his apartment, she finds him to act strange and retracted… only to turn a corner and find him dead, seemingly since days ago. As for the contents of the floppy itself? Strange photos of him staring at his computer.
On the other side, University student Ryosuke Kawashima is realizing something is decidedly wrong with his own computer after hiring a new Internet provider, and doesn’t exactly understand why strange images of alone people are appearing on his screen. Another University student has a theory: the dead are invading the world, and trapping the living in their loneliness.
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, this movie for the most part is eerily quiet. It’s not quite bombastic even on it’s scares, but its everything feels so wrong. The lighting, the camera angles, the subtle sound cues; all of it has this sense of dread you can't quite put your finger on. And then there’s the narrative underbelly: despite its decidedly dated depiction of technology and fashion (setting it squarely at the beginning of the 2000’s) this one probably hits harder than ever in a post-pandemic world, with isolation is presented as a fate worse than death, almost the one true hell a person can fall into.
Slow and subtle, it's a movie where the absence is meant to be part of the horror itself. If you come with the right expectations, it can get under your skin just the right way.
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Pulse (回路), 2001, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
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