Michi Kudo finds his friend committing suicide. The group is haunted by spirits in the computer. Ryosuke Kawashima signs up to an ISP and becomes haunted by the ghostly internet.This Japanese ghost story follows a long tradition from the far east. I was expecting more. It's a slow grind even if it has some good atmosphere. There is one and a half great horror scene but it is not enough for me. It's hard to care about the characters. An internet ghost world could be something amazing but the visual horror is limited. Other than a couple of cool visuals, I can leave most of this film. It's also two hours long and some of it drags too much for my liking.

I choose to watch it because i really appreciated Koyuki in "last samurai". So i expected to find again her delicate, sweet behavior. For that, it's true that she was the same here. In addition, Japan is a country that has always intrigued me with its spectacular symbiosis of technology and tradition. So as my first Japanese movie reviewed at IMDb, it has the flavor of a ethnology search as well: discover the country, how people live: Again, the movie is good for that: I could see that Japan is an ultra clean country compared to France and that people is very calm compared to my loud compatriots! Next, the movie has an historic value as well: it's about the Web when it was still a baby (modem, a lot of Windows) and offers a judicious analysis of what it becomes: a dehumanizing tool! The more you are connected, the more you lose human touch! Despite all this good stuff, i admit that i stopped watching after one hour: the dialogs are pretty awful, my version was dreadful (dark, no vivid color) and the directing isn't great: the supernatural is very, very slow and absolutely not clear! Finally, i couldn't recognize the characters, the places and i cut the watching. So far, my TV screen hasn't switch back on :-)

I can totally see why Pulse bores the hell out of some people! It moves at a very slow pace, and if ghost stories do nothing for you then you'll most certainly nod off. Also, if you're like my family and you demand an ugly decapitation every ten minutes, then you aren't going to be wanting to watch this. However, ghost films do do it for me. I find them extremely creepy and Pulse proves itself to be one of the creepiest I've seen. It all comes down to what scares you. I rarely get scared. The last film to properly scare me was Noroi: The Curse, however a couple of scenes in Pulse scared the Jesus out of me! I have just two words... Wobbly ghost.To me Noroi: The Curse is a masterclass in how to scare your audience. It filled me with fear, and its ending is a real gut-puncher. Whilst Pulse doesn't quite make itself quite as scary (nor as good) as Noroi, it is still one of the creepiest films I've seen in a long time. It's pretty essential that you watch this on your own, in the dark, with the sound turned up (there's some great use of sound and music) in order to get the full chilling experience. The wobbly ghost scene is one of the scariest things I've seen in my life! I can't explain it, but it gave me chills and I had to look away! Something about the movement was so unnatural and unnerving, I was thinking that I was going to be in for one hell of a ride! Unfortunately however, because this scene happens reasonably early on, there is only one other scene that almost matches its sheer scariness.Don't get me wrong, Pulse features a string of supremely creepy scenes. It's unlike anything I've seen before in the ghost department as its slow pace builds up a wonderfully eerie atmosphere (I can't see the American remake being any where near as masterful as this!) and some scenes are full of choking suspense, such as when the man first gets contact from the website. My only problem with the film is that it lacked character development, and I would've liked to have gotten to know the characters better. Also, the plot sometimes doesn't make much sense (I don't understand the majority of the third act) and the characters have strange reactions e.g. A woman see someone committing suicide but then it's never mentioned again. The whole apocalyptic element is also not fully explained, however I admired its ambition.But Pulse is really about its creepy atmosphere and that's what it succeeds in doing. It's the type of film that places its disturbing images under your brain and stays there. I never get scared, and it's refreshing to actually feel terrified at what I'm watching. I didn't find Pulse boring, although some scenes did drag it was never boring. I just found it a little confusing. Nevertheless, Pulse is one of the best ghost films I've seen. It relies on its stupendous atmosphere and seriously creepy moments. One scene towards the end, nearly scared me as much as the wobbly ghost! Pulse has the ability to send shivers down your spine and have your hair stand on end, which certainly makes it something special in my eyes! However, I was slightly disappointed that that terrifying face on the poster wasn't in it!

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.