The internet is a well-established subject for horror.
Still, few films live up to the atmospheric dread found inKiyoshi Kurosawas masterpiecePulse.
The film follows the converging paths of Michi (Kumiko Aso) and Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato).
Image by Jefferson Chacon
The story then branches to Kawashima, a college student and video game enthusiast.
Ghosts implant themselves on disks like a virus, clinging to any internet connection.
The film posits that the afterlife has a capacity and that overflow into other realms by ghosts is inevitable.
Image via Toho
So our dual protagonists have a fate worse than your typical death to worry about.
Michis friends die one by one, succumbing to this sense of foreboding.
They take their own lives or sometimes fade away.
anxieties and worries about today’s internet.
The “dead internet” theory rose in popularity in the 2020s.
The theory suggests thatover time, human beings will have less and less of an influence on the internet.
Today, bots and A.I.
Similarly, inPulse, continuing to engage with a haunted internet and ignoring digital red flags is often fatal.
Yet everyone, even our final girl, finds it impossible to avoid.
No cheap jump scares here.
Her movements are unnatural, invoking an “uncanny valley” feeling.
The film cuts away from Yabes screaming face.
Soon, Michi finds Yabe faded into ash and shadow on the wall in the same fashion of Taguchi.
Michi doesn’t know why her friends are disappearing, only that they are.
From incel forums to New Age pipelines, modern life offers much of the same.
These direct interactions with ghosts aren’t the only thing driving the epidemic inPulse.
When she isnt doom-scrolling, shes talking about the feeds and the nature of loneliness.
Seeing how many people are in pain and alone seems to radicalize Harue.
She starts to believe her lifelong loneliness and depression are an intrinsic truth.
Isolation and the suspended death and disappearance of most of Tokyo feels inevitable, even natural.
Kurosawa places the lens at the ghost’s point of view as Harue investigates.
Harue’s fear turns to a warped sort of hope as she whispers, “Not alone.”
She moves to embrace the ghost.
She can’t accept the life Kawashima offers her, butshe looks for connection and comfort in the dead.
Instead of logging off and grounding herself, Harue seeks comfort in the thing that hurts her.
The shrinking numbers of background extras is no longer subtle.
The only sound is a television playing an unending news report, listing the unbelievable number of missing persons.
Tokyo is empty except for Kawashima and Michi.
Finally, the two threads of the story meet.
Together they find Harue.
Again, Kawashima tells her they can figure this out together, but Harue is too far gone.
Slipping a bag off of her head like the man in the live feeds, she takes her life.
It’s here that Kawashima confronts a hauntingly large ghost with a stark white face.
This phantom is solid enough for Kawashima to lay his hands on him.
“Youre not real,” Kawashima tells him.
“I am real,” the ghost insists.
His voice crackles as the sounds of dial-up blend with his voice.
The ghosts arent just using the internet now.
Pulseunderstood thatthe internet would shape the way we experience our reality until the internetbecomesour reality.
It was real to Harue.
It was real to Taguchi, to Yabe, and to seemingly everyone else in Tokyo.
How could anyone be present enough to combat constant information that manipulates a hurting friend’s worst fears?
Kurosawa suggests that they cannot.
In a decade when online extremism trickles into everyday life, it feels like he might be right.
In the final act, Michi and Kawashima sit in a car, facing the ocean.
Michi asks Kawashima, “You want to go back?
To whats left of Harue?
Would that make you feel better?”
Even in his grief, Kawashima says no.
Lets go … as far as we can go.
For Kawashima, this isnt very far.
In the isolation of a ship at sea, Michi sits with him as he fades into a shadow.
Michi, the most connected character who most consistently reached out, is our sole survivor.
All that reaching saved no one.
Michi is left with only the ships captain, played byKoji YakushofromKurosawasCure.
Pulseis available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.
Watch on HBO Max
