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Pulse (2001)
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All reviews for Pulse
Tokyo Sonata review
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SpoutBlog
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hasn't rated it.
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"Tokyo Sonata is a horror film of sorts, but one without the ghosts and serial killers that have populated Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s earlier work. There aren’t even any killer trees, as in Charisma, or poisonous jellyfish, as in Bright Future. Kurosawa’s films have always offered social commentary, but on their own eccentric terms. Cure responded obliquely to the Aum Shrinyiko subway gas attacks, while Pulse confronted a generation of lonely, Internet-obsessed otaku. Even Kurosawa films with no genre elements, like Bright Future and License To Live, have been pretty off-kilter. Tokyo Sonata’s first two-thirds are startlingly straightforward, c "
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa Interview, Tok ...
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"Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) has mostly been known for Japanese horror films Cure, Pulse, and Doppelganger, but with his last few movies he’s been moving more into the dramatic. Tokyo Sonata explores a Japanese household, led by a father who is laid off from his job and is too embarrassed to tell his family. He leaves home every day, but instead of going to work he visits parks and libraries until it is time to return. Meanwhile, his rebellious older son wants to leave Japan and go to the United States to join the military, and his youngest son is secretly taking piano lessons, which he has been forbidden to do. It’s a stark look inside t "
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A Call Worth Missing
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TheWorkingDead
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TheWorkingDead Blog
loved it.
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"It may be fading now, but Asian horror films, predominantly Japanese horror films, have had a pretty good representation on American shores of late. Prior to the turn of the century, American audiences usually thought of Godzilla-style rubber monsters when thinking of Japanese horror cinema, and most never even thought of Chinese or Korean cinema at all. That all changed in 1998, when word started to get back to adventurous horror fans of what was being touted as a completely original and utterly frightening film from Japan called Ringu. In 2002 the sub-genre burst into the mainstream consciousness when Ringu got a first class Hollywood remake courtesy of director Gore Verbinski. Say what you will about remakes in general, and I don't mean any disrespect to the original, but the American remake was a perfect translation, a great way to take the horror sensibilities from Japan and inject them into American cinema. It was familiar enough to not be offputting, but different enough ... "
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Kairo (Pulse)
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analogzombie
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analogzombie Blog
liked it.
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"Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse is a decent into dread. The theme, as in some of Kurosawa's other films, is the loneliness modern society creates within us. Technology is pushing us into a world where information is abundant, but interpersonal communication is on the wane. It makes sense then, that a film about this should emerge from Japan. It's funny how the closer people come physically to each other (as in population density) the further they drift emotionally. Everyone is caught up in their personal reality and fiercely protective of their privacy. Pulse explores this theme through an odd internet site that some of the characters come across. "Do you want to see a ghost?" the website asks. Computers turn themselves on to reveal solitary beings sitting in rooms with plastic bags over their heads. Isolated apparitions emanating from the screens of isolated people. Claustrophobia is Kurosawa's mise en scene here.It's hard to say exactly what the plot of Pulse is, exc ... "
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Tension and Release
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slipofthetongue
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SlipOfTheTongue Blog
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"PULSE (2001, a.k.a. Kairo) isn't particularly scary but it does a pretty good job of creating a sense of impending doom. The film is another in the long string of arguments in favor of evoking tension and mood rather than over explaining or clobbering the audience with exposition. Things happen slowly in this movie. That's not necessarily a bad thing but the payoff isn't a big one in terms of scares. Instead the film aims for creating a sense of doom and gloom that hangs rather substantially over the entire second half. It's not quite enough but it is interesting and at times chilling to watch. We know that something is happening in Tokyo, something that involves ghosts crossing over into our world and sucking unsuspecting victims into its own but we are never really told what is literally going on. It's all speculation on the part of the main characters. I don't suppose one really needs a true explanation though and it does help that many of the sce ... "
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Pulse (Kairo)
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IronAbacus
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Haiku Reviews of Extreme Asian Cinema
liked it.
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"A relentlessly bleak and eerie film rife with existential dread | ????? | IMDb | Spout "
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