Pulse (2001, Japanese)

Pulse (Kairo), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 creep-fest about ghosts in the machine, is the latest victim of Hollywood’s mania for J-horror remakes. However, unlike staples of the genre such as the Ringu series (which was held back by overzealous production companies until after the American version was in theaters), Pulse is currently available on DVD in the U.S. – so if J-horror is your thing, snap it up before teen dreams Kristen Bell and Ian Somerhalder give it the PG-13 treatment in July 2006.

A little disclaimer – Kurosawa is currently one of my favorite directors, and I’ve been watching all of his films I can find since discovering Cure late last year. He’s a quirky master of psychological horror, and in movies like Doppelganger, Charisma, and the aforementioned Cure, the director and his favorite leading man, Koji Yakusho, plumb the often bizarre and ugly depths of the male Japanese mind. Paranoia runs rampant in these films, as do murderous schizophrenic tendencies and a blackly quirky sense of humor. They often tend to play on the border of J-horror without entirely tipping over the edge, but even the relatively straightforward drama Bright Future deals with issues of psychic rupture and a distinct mistrust of urban Japan.

Pulse shifts from this borderline style, wholeheartedly embracing the horror genre as packaging for familiar Kurosawa themes. The story begins with a trio of friends discussing their concern for a fourth friend, who has been holed up in his apartment for a few weeks working on a semi-secret computer program. After this friend’s bizarre suicide, the story shifts slightly, focusing on another young man and the creepy signals he is picking up through his computer’s internet connection. As these occurrences accelerate – strange, indistinct forms glimpsed on computer screens, coupled with a mysterious rash of suicides – the focus moves back and forth between the central protagonists, as it begins to appear that all of Tokyo may well be haunted by an unnerving number of unquiet spirits.

The structures of Kurosawa’s films can at times be maddening, as they often begin with only a cursory indication of plot details, requiring the viewer to pick up clues as the story progresses (which is often difficult while reading subtitles). The proceedings generally hang on mood rather than a strong story arc, and while mood is extremely important to effective J-horror, Pulse seems at times too drawn-out, so slow in mounting its final onslaught that the final third of the film ultimately loses a bit of steam.

However, what the final minutes of Pulse might lack in a horrific release of tension, they gain in a more subtle, pervasive sense of terror, indicating that Kurosawa’s intentions all along may not have been just about a good creep-out, but rather a twist on one of his favorite themes – isolation within the city and the loneliness of urban life. Kurosawa is adept at showing the solitude of urban spaces, particularly in densely populated Tokyo. Even before people start disappearing from the city streets, there is a visual emphasis in Pulse on empty, or nearly empty, rooms and deserted boulevards. Using horror to convey the desperate solitude of contemporary urban life is a nifty trick, but the match isn’t seamless, and if Kurosawa had excised a few of his atmospheric set pieces, the movie might have packed a bigger punch. Still, the director has managed something that I haven’t seen much of – J-horror that matches style with substance.

(Warning: do not watch this movie during the day, or in a room with a lot of lights on. Yes, this sounds like a ploy to scare your pants off, but Kurosawa’s the stinker, not me – visual details in the film are so subtle, and the colors so murky, that you may have no idea what’s going on if there’s any light bouncing off the screen.)