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After a college girl's boyfriend hangs himself in another
room while she is in his apartment, strange content is discovered
on his computer. Friends receive e-mails supposedly from the
dead boy, and a mysterious website connects itself automatically,
asking "Do you want to see a ghost?" - before showing frightening
and jerky video images of desperately lonely people. As reports
of suicides abound, the students learn that ghosts are breaking
through from the other side and sucking the life essence from
the living. Red tape will keep them out of a single room,
but ghosts are now running riot throughout the city and beyond,
and there seems to be no way to keep them out...
When
I reviewed the original
Japanese version of this film it was an absolute
delight. It was very creepy, at times funny (the humour was
in the reaction to the horror) and it galloped along at a
fair pace. Now, I've yet to understand the reasoning behind
remaking a perfectly good, even classic, Japanese supernatural
horror. The American viewing public must be so short-sighted
to not consider watching an East Asian film just because it
has subtitles and no stereotypical college kids. But it happened
with The
Ring, then The
Grudge, and now Pulse.
The moment the opening credits began with images of technology-driven
messaging (resplendent with accompanying buzzes, dials and
beeps) I realised that this version of the film had completely
missed the point. The Japanese original managed to create
an atmosphere of otherworldliness, whereas this one handles
the mundane as if it's the most natural thing in the world.
Some scenes are copied straight, and others are created afresh,
without any consideration for style or mood. The scene in
the cellar where the ghost appears through the wall, drifts
across the room and peers over the couch is chilling in the
original but just plain tedious in this one.
Perhaps it's the culture difference, but Hollywood and its
ilk have no idea how to capture the ambience of an East Asian
supernatural ghost story. Therefore, this project was doomed
in my eyes before it started. The inclusion of a Buffy lookalike
certainly doesn't help. I didn't want to be so negative; in
fact, anybody coming new to this concept might well be enthralled
by the remake without knowing the original exists. But then
that's the problem, isn't it? An average film at best.
Ty
Power
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