Pulse

Pulse is, in my mind, the pinnacle of the J-horror wave in the late ’90s and early ’00s. It is part of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s early explorations into the apocalypse, which also include Cure (1997) and the criminally underseen Charisma (1999). Pulse is a film filled with cosmic dread, quiet despair, and technological isolation through the internet, which is all the more scarily relevant 24 years after its debut.

Made up of two narratives that eventually converge, the film first follows Michi (the phenomenal Kumiko Aso), who works at a rooftop plant shop in Tokyo with a group of friends. One of them, Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi), has been missing for several days. When Michi goes to his apartment to retrieve a company computer disk, she finds Taguchi preoccupied and not acting like himself. It only gets worse from there.

The second plotline centers on Ryosuke (Haruhiko Kato), a college student who has recently switched to a new internet service. His computer signs itself onto a strange website displaying disturbing images of people alone in decrepit rooms, including a man with a bag over his face and “Help me” written repeatedly on the walls. He enlists some friends at school to help figure out what is going on, and this situation, too, only gets worse.

As Michi and Ryosuke follow their investigations, a quiet apocalypse is unfurling in the background. Doors sealed off with mysterious red tape start appearing throughout, and Tokyo becomes more and more quiet with each passing scene. The film cultivates a dreamlike dread as the city empties and the characters begin to uncover the otherworldly, and ultimately despairing, reason behind the madness. Along with 1998’s classic cyberpunk/techno-horror anime Serial Experiments Lain, Pulse remains one of the best explorations of the paranoia and detachment that come from an increasingly connected, overwhelming world. As these young people struggle to hold on to their sanity and attachments to one another as their world falls apart, the film eschews jump scares for a far deeper, more emotional fear. This approach gives rise to the best sequence in all of J-horror, when Michi’s friend Yabe (Masatoshi Matsuo) encounters a ghost after entering one of the doors marked with red tape. It is a scene that still haunts my lizard brain at night.

Running nearly two hours, Pulse allows gestation time for both narratives before coming together in the finale. The intentional pacing and depressing atmosphere could be off-putting for some viewers, but I think it helps sustain a sense of cosmic dread that gradually ratchets up to a terrifying climax. As with many of his films, Kurosawa populates Pulse with abandoned buildings that seem to be literally coming apart at the seams; the world these characters inhabit feels dirty and wrong, with many scenes dimly lit and oppressively dark. Aided by one of the best scores in all of J-horror, Pulse will infest your brain with lasting gloom.