I finally watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film PULSE (Kairo). I don’t think I’ve seen any of this acclaimed director’s 30+ films, but this is the one people seem to mention most. And I get it now. There’s something very distinct about the potency of its forlorn, foreboding mood and the unusual way it combines a ghost story with an early internet thriller that then dissolves into a surreal apocalypse. The overcast skies, small, impersonal apartments and emphasis on staring at chunky turn-of-the-millennium computer monitors is already depressing before it starts to feel like depression may be its primary subject.
Michi Kudo (Kumiko Asō, CASSHERN) works with a couple other people at a small nursery in Tokyo. She’s waiting for her co-worker Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi, TOMIE, GODZILLA MINUS ZERO) to get her a computer disk he was supposed to prepare for her, and he hasn’t shown up for a few days, so she goes to check on him at his apartment. He’s there, but acting kind of weird, and then out of the blue he goes into the other room and hangs himself. (read the rest of this shit…)
