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List Price: $12.95 | | Label: Weinstein Company
Salesrank: 11589
Released: December 5, 2006 |
| Our Price: $4.54 |
| Used Price: $0.01 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The year s most original horror film Pulse takes fear into new territory the very devices we trust to get us through the day. When the dead discover a means to contact the living through electronic devices cell phones and computers become open gateways to monstrosities and destruction. Starring Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) Christina Milian (Love Don t Cost a Thing) Ian Somerhalder (Lost) and Rick Gonzalez (Coach Carter) Pulse is loaded with terrifying thrills and gruesome special effects and capped with an astonishing surprise ending.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 796019795951 Manufacturer No: 79595
Description of Pulse (Unrated Widescreen Edition):
Pulse provides clear evidence that by the summer of 2006, the cycle of American remakes of Japanese horror films had reached its inevitable downturn. After peaking with the Ring and scoring a marginal success with The Grudge, the cycle was almost guaranteed to sink to the low-point of this unnecessary and mostly lackluster remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 shocker. It benefits from a standard upgrade in CGI effects and doom-laden "bleak-chic" atmosphere, but it's almost completely devoid of suspense as a group of college students led by Mattie (played by Kristin Bell, TV's Veronica Mars) investigate the suicide of Mattie's boyfriend and discover a kind of wi-fi conduit that allows malevolent spirits to be transmitted from their afterlife to our world via the Internet – think of it as kind of a broadband connection from hell, if you will. Pretty soon it's obvious that Pulse is trying (as Kurosawa's original film before it) to serve as cautionary tale about how we've allowed our lives to become numbed and devalued by using technologies (computers, cell-phones, PDAs, etc.) that keep us all connected at the expense of personal intimacy. Many of the creepiest images from the original Pulse are carried over here, and director Jim Sonzero does his best to keep the cautionary themes intact, but at some point (and after a great deal of pre-release tinkering to fit the obligatory PG-13 rating for the lucrative teen market) you have to ask yourself: why bother? --Jeff Shannon
Pulse (Unrated Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
A wannabe horror movie with no pulse 
2008-08-16 - 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.
Scary Monsters 
2008-07-30 - 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.
Decent Concept, Poorly Fufilled 
2008-07-12 - Pulse is a horror movie, with a modern twist. Being in the so called digital 'myspace' age the internet seems necessary, it wouldn't be complete without the terror lurking within. Ghosts of some sort in some odd manor established the internet as a haunting ground! They can effect wireless gear, cell phones, and printer as well.
The concept seems a bit cheesy, but in all honesty it is somewhat original.The characters are presented with a chaotic mass suicide problem sweeping their city. The suicides seem not to be linked in any manor, but have touched home base with the leading female character (Mattie). To not spoil the movie, some frequencies were not meant to be touched... Some computers hide details on these events. Ghost will try to claim your will to live. Certain objects help prevent the ghosts from entering, but how long can one survive without the will to live?
As appealing as that may sound, the movie suffers from a short length (88 minutes), the effects are not too great, and the movie never really 'built' up. Upon understanding the basic plot, it feels like it's already over before it truly began! The ending felt rushed, and the scare factor was minimal. If you are still interested in this film, try a friday night rental for this, or catch it on a movie channel.
Ghosts from Cyberpsace 
2008-06-29 - Pulse is not your average story of the Internet killer kind of thing. It is a story about a college student who has hacked his way into someone's computer and released a virus, or so they think. Weird things begin happening to those who use the Internet and people start to die or disappear.
The whole thing is focusing around the hacker's girlfriend who is trying to put a stop to this madness while losing her friends around her one by one.
I thought the movie was pretty entertaining and suspenseful up until the ending of the movie. The ending I was not pleased with one bit. I have not read the book this thing was based on, but the movie fan likes to see a happy ending, where all is safe, everything's over, life goes back to normal, and maybe it closes on one last demon remaining who has a quick clap sound effect to show it's not over, of the hand punching out of the ground, that sort of thing... not what they did for this movie.
If it was based on Mars, you might believe it, but it ends in a disbelief of reality that really spoiled the finale of this movie.
The overall FX and plot is OK, it was one of the better films I had seen for a while, well, up until the ending of the movie. It's pretty entertaining, but it just needed an alternate ending to help make it a better film.
PURE GARBAGE
2008-06-14 - i will not say much because most reviews already trashed the film enough ......... belive in them , this movie sucks , japanese movie sucks, i do not know why they became so important and "cult" nowdays ......... and the american remakes of the japanese films sucks even more.
