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Jul 19, 2017 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

Little makes much sense in the superbly creepy Pulse, but its imagery is some of the most haunting to have graced a horror film in the last two decades.

In Pulse, ghosts enter our world through the spreading use of Internet connections. They prey on the lonely, drawing them into a mysterious cycle of actions – compulsively creating, and then seeking out, a “forbidden room.” Once they’ve entered one of these rooms, their fate is sealed – they’re turned into crippled, wrecked husks; walking ghouls until they’ve given up and killed themselves, or wither away and vanish into dust.

“Do you want to meet a ghost?”

This 2001 Japanese horror flick arrived at very interesting moment given its subject matter. This is a time when the Internet was in wide use, but it was still new, novel, and something regarded primarily with curious caution – not the beating heart of public consciousness that it’s become today. This was before social media; a time before phones provided people with a constant, open portal to the Web, when the best mode of access was through a temporary desktop connection. Pulse is an interesting time capsule into a bygone day, be it one that was only 16 years ago. If you’re having a hard time remembering a time before the Internet was our favored mode of communication, the compact disc one of Pulse’s heroes receives in the mail from an Internet service provider is a pretty good reminder. Pulse is very much of its time: a movie that, at points, uses dialup modem noises as a scare factor.

Pulse follows two converging storylines. The first circles around a group of twenty-something employees of a plant sales company; when one doesn’t show up to work, they check in on him at his apartment, where he unexpectedly hangs himself midway through a casual conversation. Days later, they open a disk he’d been working on to find a grainy photo of him standing in front of his computer – a ghastly face reflecting back at him from the screen of his monitor. In the second story, a college student signs up for the Internet, only to have his computer connect on its own to a terrible series of live video feeds that seem to show people on the brink of suicide. He consults a fellow student in the computer science department and the two attempt to get to the bottom of the mysterious, unwanted connections. In both stories, the casts are gradually whittled down as more and more of our heroes’ friends are drawn into the ghosts’ scary game.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s film never flatly states the rules of its world – if this had been a Hollywood horror movie, we’d likely have been given a bulletpoint presentation about the ghosts’ operations and motive in the trailer. This establishes a terrifying and, at times, almost overwhelming feeling of dread that persists throughout the entire movie. Pulse taps into its viewers’ innate fear of the unknown. It’s a powerful choice, if one that will frustrate those prone to picking apart the movie’s (many) inconsistencies. Pulse is a movie that will keep you up at night – whether it’s because you’re creeped out, or because you’re desparately trying to piece together what it all meant.

And, oh, that imagery – Pulse’s ghosts are spooky and surreal. I won’t say much, because their individuality is what makes them so haunting, and spoiling that would sap several of the film’s scares. Kurosawa doesn’t rely on gore or violence to make his specters haunting, but on their inhumanness and otherworldliness. Pulse’s ghosts should not exist in this world, and you can feel it as much as the characters.

Pulse is an extremely haunting film: a cult classic sure to linger in the minds of horror fans who favor uneasiness over outright shock. Arrow’s new Blu-ray + DVD set pairs the movie with a comprehensive collection of bonus features that provide a thorough overview of the film’s making and marketing. A video tribute from The Guest and You’re Next filmmakers Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, and essay booklet are also included.