You won't be disappointed!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Watching Pulse now for the first time was as hard as starting from the beginning of The Big Bang Theory in modern times.On that side tangent, I did recently start from episode one of The Big Bang Theory having never seen an episode and hearing everyone rave about it. The way they went on and on about the technology for when that show began was difficult – knowing what I know now.And in this 2001 Japanese ghost story, it was equally uncomfortable hearing that dial-up tone over and over again. I don't ever wanna go back to those days!Eh, I digress. The movie was alright. Had some good ideas and a last act ten times better than the movie as a whole. But, I found it increasingly difficult to keep up with who was who and their relationships with each other. NO, that's not a racist statement of "oh, all Asians lookalike." In fact, they all had very unique styles and appearances. It was just a bunch of random people with different backgrounds and employments/schooling that I had troubles with.Also, ghost stories aren't my forté. And honestly, when I started this movie on Amazon streaming, I thought I was watching another movie about lightning strikes or a Mother Nature Attacks movie. But, when it's established it's a ghost story, I try to give it the benefit of the doubt, even though they never scare me.Pulse is about the "internet" and how it's a portal. Apparently, back in 2001, one couldn't Google what this "internet" was, so one character, laughably, has to pull out a very large manual to learn how to connect to such a modern thing. Stop. I started using the "internet" in 1992 in college. Back then, for me and my friends, it was an Electronic Forum (or EF) used between students and teachers at school and even, gasp, off-campus! Obviously, we were in the stone-ages in 1992, but we definitely knew what the "internet" was in the very early 1990s and not long after, AOL became the Wal-Mart of the online world.So, I do NOT give this movie a pass that someone, specifically a young male adult in technology-centered Japan, wouldn't know what the "internet" was or even bookmarks, the "screen-print" key, etc. in 2001. Hogwash. Regardless, the movie is the ghost story to the line "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth." So, ghosts figured out a way to transport via dial-up (haha, sounds silly and yeah, it was,) and make people commit suicide, I guess by scaring them to death and loneliness. It's up to our random young adults, including the ignorant- internet-idiot to try and figure out the motives and keep their (seconds-earlier-strangers) best friends alive. Oddly, since this was my first (and frankly, only) time seeing this, it seemed awfully familiar and felt like this movie had already been remade. Alas, it had in America half a decade later – nope, not interested in that and it looks awful, anyways. But, it also felt like the other Japanese film, Ringu and its American remakes as well. I guess this ghost portal thing was hot back then.I suppose if you're scared of ghosts and still don't know what the "internet" is, you might find enjoyment here. It has some good scenes and use of silence after a tense score placement, but overall, it's too long of a movie to get to the goods.***Final thoughts: I am not opposed to reading subtitles (always better than dubbing!) but damnit, stop putting all white subtitles on top of pitch-white scenes! At times, words were literally fleshed out from the screen thanks to the white-on-white subtitles.

PULSEI love Japanese horror movies. I believe that the Japanese are the best at making horror. The atmosphere that these guys give the movies is what is the scary part.This movie is about a web site that apparently allows you to communicate with the dead. It all is not as it seems. People start killing themselves and it is down to 2 people to find out why their friends are dying.The film is very confusing. I watched this with a friend of mine and we both were wondering what was happening through the film. It is a shame because I was enjoying it, but even when the movie finished I was still not sure what the hell was going on with it. I had to Google the film to read the synopsis to confirm what it was about. The atmosphere was there which was good. There were times when it was a bit spooky and you wondered what was going to happen.The acting was good, but then I don't know any Japanese film where the acting is bad. I suppose it does make it better for them that I don't understand much Japanese. I did learn quite a bit a few years ago, but not enough to understand a film. If I could speak Japanese I wonder if I would still think they can all act very well. The movie stars Haruhiko Kato, Kumiko Aso and Koyuki.This film is good and I will watch it again to try and understand it a little more, but overall I was disappointed in it a little bit. I much preferred Ring, Battle Royale, Audition and Versus… these are my favourite Japanese films that I will watch soon hopefully and review for you.I will give this film 5 out of 10. Maybe I will give it more after the second watch… time will tell."Death was... eternal loneliness"For more reviews, please like my Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ordinary-Person-Movie- Reviews/456572047728204?ref=hl

I think I saw this film mentioned in of those many "Scariest Movies You've Never Seen" lists that always seem to circulate around Halloween time. The plot sounded interesting, so I decided to check it out. If one had to describe a plot, it starts with a teenager who kills himself in a creepy fashion, and how his death affects his coworkers and friends. Each of this small group of young adults starts to experience strange occurrences.All of this is tied together with the emergence of a new phenomenon called the internet (remember, this was released in 2001). In a separate side story that eventually intersects with the characters mentioned in the first paragraph, a young man is excited to be installing his internet software and connecting his dial up modem for the first time, but when he finally connects, his computer seems to be a portal into rooms populated by creepy half human/ghosts. He seeks to advice of a computer science student, and together they try to figure out what is going on while being drawn further into the mystery.The film is obviously pushing in a not so subtle way a message about how technology and the internet are making us more isolated and lonely, to the point where the line between people and ghosts is blurred. Even though the message is not subtle, it is effective, and story delivers some genuinely creepy and disturbing scenes in exploring that message. As many other reviewers who are much more familiar with Japanese horror than I am have mentioned, this genre of horror is less interested in quick and instant payoffs than in gradually building a sense of dread.I deducted a couple of stars because I felt the running time could have been shaved a bit without much loss of effectiveness, and because I shared the concerns some other reviewers have mentioned about how the ending felt disconnected from the earlier parts of the film. But I'd still recommend it. Even though the internet technology displayed in this film feels extremely outdated already, the film's message is still relevant, and it left me with a lingering sense of dread and creepiness that endured even after the movie had ended.

What could have been just another RING rip-off turns out to be one of the most thought-provoking and genuinely eerie films I've seen come out of Japan: it's a film in which the door between the living and the dead is accidentally opened, leading to all manner of sinister events as it transpires that the dead are returning to Earth.Like most J-horrors of the past decade, PULSE is a slow burner that moves almost glacially, gradually slotting in the various pictures of the jigsaw as its final game plan becomes apparent. Saying too much would spoil the intriguing, dream-like narrative, suffice to say that this is a film that doesn't disappoint at any stage during its progress. The 'ghost' segments are supremely creepy and disturbing, countered neatly by shock suicide scenes and a clever bit of FX involving a plane that was later cribbed for Alex Proyas's Hollywood movie KNOWING.The cast give typically understated performances that increase in intensity as the character list is gradually whittled down, leading to one heck of a grim climax. Altogether, I can't fault the direction, writing, acting as all three combine to deliver an imaginative and thoughtful ghost story that's extremely different from most of what's come before.