PULSE (2001) – the best horror movies are the ones that worm their way under your skin and make you itch for days afterwards. Ever since seeing Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse I’ve had a Pavlovian panic reaction to red duct tape, man-shaped stains on my walls, and the sound of fear has become the sound of a 56k modem dialing up in the early days of the internet. A true classic, but moving as slowly and deliberately as a razor blade dragged across your brain, Kurosawa’s Pulse starts with the disappearance of a colleague. His co-worker visits him at home and he seems okay, except kind of abstracted and remote, until he suddenly just…disappears. It turns out that a plague is spreading from the internet into meat space and it’s caused by the dead. They’re lonely and they want us to all kill ourselves so we can join them and be lonely too. Step by careful step, Kurosawa gives us characters who are all too human, and then he drops them into an apocalypse of dead emotions, blank stares, and suicidal urges. Pulse may start with a single missing co-worker but by the time it’s over the entire planet is ready for its coffin. Containing some of the most genuinely startling imagery ever seen in a horror movie, this is a classic example of making the viewer the lobster in the pot. It gets hot so slowly that by the time you notice your brain is boiling it’s too late to turn off the film. (Watch it!)
