Pulse [HD DVD]
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Movie Reviews of Pulse [HD DVD]
Movie Review: This movie has no pulse. It's completely dead.
Summary: 1 Stars
It contains no suspense nor horror. I watched it in the theatre and got bored after 30 minutes. The special effects are exactly like those of a bad video game. I mean I can see they look obviously fake. The acting is like that of a bad B movie. It seems remaking a Japanese hit movie does not guarantee a success in North America.
Save your money on this.
Movie Review: Meh...
Summary: 3 Stars
This one was just meh...it was run-of-the-mill horror, designed to make you freak out about your technology use. I am pretty sure I got this free bundled with my Halloween remake and thats why it was on my DVD shelf. I watched it all the way through and then escorted it to my "sell" pile.Movie Review: Pulse - Can't Speak For The Original, But The Remake Has Flat-lined
Summary: 2 Stars
Pulse makes several of the typical mistakes that recent horror films seem to repeat. Despite great cinematography and special effects work, the movie is saddled by a ridiculous script that works too hard explaining the back-story yet still winds up making no sense. What's worse, they obviously had a budget and several well known actors. This could have been a good movie, but it succeeds only in startling those with jittery nerves.
If I ever saw the original, I have since forgotten it or the differences are too many for me to draw the connection. It doesn't really matter what this movie is based on. It simply does not stand on its own.
The Good
The dark filming and subtle lighting of the film do deserve some credit. They definitely add to the mood of the intersection between the worlds of the living and the dead. Yes it has been done before, but achieving this look is still technically challenging. The muted colors and darkened pallet are used in a way that actually aids in the story. So kudos to the director of photography and the cinematography team.
The special effects are also relatively well done. Although I still have a gripe in the fact that they are sometimes misused to create rippling and fuzzy fade-ins where the monsters or ghosts appear. Still, that seems to be more of a flaw of editing or direction. Whoever did the CGI work here deserves a lot of credit. Unfortunately that is where the bulk of the positive ends.
The Bad
*Mild spoilers*
The story focuses on some college friends in a small town where research into an expanded wireless communications band has allowed *creatures* or *ghosts* to cross over into the world of the living. As more people commit suicide and as their friends disappear, our young heroine much search for the answer in the form of a computer virus to disable the servers that are allowing these creatures to cross into our dimension. These creatures seek out the living to take their life force away. Nothing about this story in and of itself is unacceptable. This is horror after all. But they go to great lengths to explain how this might be possible. In fact, the excessive explanations of the impossible are coupled with some things that are never explained, like that silly red tape. On top of that, some of the lines that are given to these actors make no sense in the context of the movie.
The story line is so ridiculous as to prevent any rational person from suspending disbelief. That's hard to do to a horror fan. We can watch Mike Myers get shot 30 times and accept that he can get back up. We are willing to accept space monsters coming to earth to eat us. The fact that this story was so loosely written as to be unbelievable is terribly disappointing.
And if you want your movies to be filled with action, be prepared for Achilles heel number two. Not only is the plot silly, but the story takes forever to get there and drags on in an ineffective attempt to create angst or dread.
Some of the acting is ok, but plenty of it is bad too. And when you have terrible lines to deliver, it doesn't make acting any easier. They definitely seemed to over-rely on the exaggerated scream here.
*Mild Spoiler Ahead*
If you know anything about technology, you will not want to watch this. For example, there's a point where these creatures can apparently use cell phones to locate the living (apparently, they have access to CDMA and GSM technology). The heroine stares at her phone and notices the bars as the radio bulletin warns against using computers or cell phones. The monsters appear. But once they get to a *dead zone* the monsters disintegrate. Hmmmm. Do you think you might want to turn your phone OFF??? Now I know where the idea for all those Verizon *dead zone* commercials came from.
The movie also has an oversimplified ending. The solution to the problem is both silly and poorly depicted. Granted the action does pick up above the occasional ghost jumping out at you to startle you. When you finally reach the conclusion, you will probably experience more laughter than dread.
Conclusion
In my humble opinion, this movie was a missed opportunity. If you are just looking for a few hours of mindless fun, this might still do it for you. But if you know anything about how technology works, don't like slow moving movies, don't like dark noir movies and aren't easily startled by ghosts jumping out of nowhere, then this will bore you more than it will scare you. And if you are critical of the many remakes of Japanese horror movies that don't live up to the originals, this probably fits in that group too. Only see this if you have a free rental or it's on cable, but don't buy this DVD till you've seen the movie a few times.
Enjoy.
Movie Review: A wannabe horror movie with no pulse
Summary: 1 Stars
Another remake that doesn,t work. Okay it starts out alright in the first 15 minutes then the rest of the movie is a huge let down. They totally butchered the storyline. Don,t waste your time with this boring mess.Movie Review: Scary Monsters
Summary: 4 Stars
PULSE reminded me a little bit of IMPULSE with Tim Matheson and Meg Tilly from the 1980s, but it's not as good. Its Japanese origins show up in its lackluster pacing and its dependence on a group of pale, powerful, angry ghosts who can not be stopped. Once I see that an American movie was based on a previously existing Japanese one, I sort of stop hoping for a happy ending, I already know everyone is going to die (unless there's a child in it who can somehow reach back to a dead child ghost and get them to stop harassing today's adults), and there are so many movies nowadays in which everyone dies, and the blue filter is pumped up to fill the screen with industrial angst, enough already.
What a tragedy that low ratings cancelled TV's VERONICA MARS and stranded poor Kristen Bell in a movie career that does nothing but insult her. It's sort of like what happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar ended, but SMG walked out of Buffy, so it's her own stupid fault, whereas if this were the best of all possible worlds VERONICA MARS would still be on the air, Logan and Piz perhaps squaring for an all-out competition now for Veronica's favors. Instead we have PULSE. It's sort of like a parody of VERONICA MARS' difficulties dealing with her mother. Here we see the mother trying to call Mattie, Mattie trying to call the mother, then an hour later she tries again, then the movie forgets all about her.
Please, someone, take poor Christina Milian out of the movies. She can't really act and nobody should have to play that scene where she's in the laundry room, the washer opens from within, and a ghost or something invisible starts throwing her laundry, one item at a time, out of the washer into the floor, splat. Splat. Splat. And that's her best scene! It's another horror movie where every person of color goes long before the white people. You'd think Hollywood would learn a lesson but oh, no. The friends of color are seemingly there just to perish and give their white co-stars some good discovery scenes: "Why, Izzie, why?" "No, Stone, no!" Nevertheless this movie has some important points to make and has warned me of the danger of turning on my computer and cell phone. Got to go.