I’m sure we’ve all seen the work of some impressionist painters before. Impressionists weren’t concerned with getting the details right. They wanted to make sure you understood the whole scene. That you got the emotion of the painting, the heart of it, rather than the brain. Take Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ for example. We’ve all seen it. Try to pick out any real details in the painting. You can’t. But those details aren’t really needed are they? In fact, if they were there they’d ruin the painting wouldn’t they? We don’t need those details to give us the feeling of looking at the stars on a clear evening. Let’s pretend for a second that Van Gogh, instead of sticking to peaceful scenes, had attempted to paint pictures that disturbed you. Pictures that made you paranoid and uneasy and frightened.
Pulse would be THAT impressionist painting. It’s missing alot of details but the cumulative effect is a masterwork of paranoia and loneliness.
I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way. If you can’t stand a story that doesn’t tie up neatly, stay away. If you want blood and gore, stay away. If you’re sick to death of the “let’s cast whoever’s hot on the WB and MTV” thing, stay away. If, on the other hand, you can tolerate something that’s a little slow and takes it’s time to gradually, almost imperceptibly, bring on the creeps, this is for you. And I’ll be the first to admit, that the premise is very stupid.
The premise is that a couple of computer hackers have found unknown radio frequencies and strangely enough, people are talking on them. Turns out those people are dead and now that someone has discovered them they can come on down to where you and I live. There’s more to it than that, but, the movie doesn’t attempt a really detailed explanation so I won’t attempt to understand the details. Neither should you. Just know that these ghosts are everwhere where there’s a radio or phone signal. And if you’re in one of those areas you are fair game.
Once you get past the premise being very bad, the effect is very unsettling because there are essetntially no safe areas. And as the movie progress and more and more people start dying, the movie achieves a feeling of very intense paranoia. The ghosts can’t be seen until they are right near you. They can’t be heard at all if they don’t want to be. And since signals can go through walls there is no where to hide. They only hope for escape is to grab a car and head for the mountains. Which is what the last remaining survivors of humanity have to do.
Sometimes horror works not because it’s scary, but rather, because it gets under the skin and makes you paranoid. It presents a scene where you are asked to explore a very dark and disturbing idea. Pulse presents a picture which attempts to convey paranoia and loneliness. It does this very effectively, even if it leaves out a couple of big details along the way.
8/10
