Critics reviews

Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s poignant, elegiac horror film remains one of the high-water marks of cinema’s forays into the sociological and emotional impact of the internet.

With its gorgeously composed frames populated by subtly lurking ghosts and terrifying use of slow-motion and inky shadow, the filmmaking is no less effective today, even if the concept is laughably antiquated (we're all so disconnected). In fact, since the film didn't receive domestic distribution until 2005, for most Americans Pulse was dated upon arrival. Yet mere months after 9-11, it carried an undeniable charge, especially in its desolate climax.

Pulse is all at once a terrifying modern ghost story, an update of the Book of Revelations and a parable of urban alienation... [The film's] combination of subtlety and indeterminacy makes for an uncanny treat, full of phantom ideas and unanswered questions.

Whilst there are a handful of arresting moments... Pulse mostly proceeds at a funereal pace and the pallid characters fail to engage one's emotions.

Unsettling and puzzling rather than outright scary, this is as much a bizarro art film as a horror show. While not exactly reaching Ring-levels of terror, it's certainly one for connoisseurs of the weird.

[Pulse] is a bit too long, despite several great sequences. [Kurosawa] films most of the movie in mid- to long-shot, emphasizing the anomie yet allowing little real character to emerge. His ghosts are magnificent though, and their plaintive cries of "Help" are truly haunting.

Pulse is not just the scariest sample of J-horror I've yet seen, but also the most profound, a purgatory of loneliness on both sides of a computer screen, hence (to the characters) of life itself.

[Kurosawa] is less interested in tying up loose ends than in creating a sense of melancholy and depicting psychological states like dislocation... [He] works in roundabout ways, which some viewers will find far too slow and repetitive.

[Pulse] is probably the quietest end-of-the-world movie ever made... Still, it works. It conjures up an atmosphere of hopeless dread out of the most banal of elements... Like the best horror movies, it doesn't beat you over the head, splatter you, or fold, spindle and mutilate you. Rather, slowly and subtly, it creeps you out.

“Pulse” captures the anomie and depravation of early adulthood with such bone-chilling accuracy. You hate to call a ghost movie haunting, but there it is. It sticks around and rattles.

Kurosawa, creates a handful of images that have the unsettling oddity of a nightmare suspended in time... You could say that the movie is ”inexplicable,” but the line that separates the uncanny from the obtuse has rarely been so thin.

Just know that Pulse possesses the dark art to make your pulse pound and your hair stand on end — with no cheating.