Pulse (2001)

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Movie
German title Pulse
Original title Cairo
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 2001
length 114 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa
script Kiyoshi Kurosawa
production Shun Shimizu ,
Atsuyuki Shimoda ,
Ken Inoue ,
Seiji Okuda
music Takefumi Haketa
camera Junichirō Hayashi
cut Junichi Kikuchi
occupation

Pulse ( Japanese 回路 , Cairo ) is a Japanese horror film from 2001 by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa , who also wrote the screenplay.

action

Kudo Michi

Kudo Michi works in a greenhouse in Tokyo. Her close circle of friends consists of three colleagues: Sasano Junko, Toshio Yabe and Taguchi. Taguchi has been gone a few days because he wants to work on a floppy disk . Michi visits him in his apartment and he looks healthy. When she turns her back on him, he hangs himself in a flash - or was she talking to a dead man?

She discusses with her work colleagues and finds some files from Taguchi, including the photo of his black apartment with the reflection of his face in a picture tube . The TV reception seems to be disturbed in an unusual way. Yabe is called by Taguchi's ghostly voice hissing "help me". Yabe goes to the deceased's apartment to find that there is a black shadow on the wallpaper in the corner where his body was hanging. On the way back he looks into a neighboring house, which is marked with a red ribbon. He removes it, goes in, is attacked by a female ghost, and crawls under the sofa. After this incident, Yabe falls silent and hardly reacts. Michi later receives a similar call, only this time it seems to be Yabe's voice. She goes to his apartment, where she only discovers a dark stain on the wall. Terrified, she rushes off.

This time it is much quieter at Michi and Junko's workplace, and the boss is nowhere to be seen either. All over town, residents are setting up doors with red caution tape. Junko enters one of these doors where a ghost attacks her. Michi saves her and helps her. Then she brings them to her apartment. It is completely catatonic . When Michi turns away, Junko asks: "Do I have to die like this now?" And she replies: "Of course not". When she looks back, a stain has taken her friend's place.

Kawashima Ryosuke

Kawashima Ryosuke is a student of economics. As a complete computer novice, he wants to dial into the Internet for the very first time . As soon as he has the nightmare of Windows installation and EULA behind him, the PC dials itself in and visits pitch-dark webcams that reveal petrified, silent silhouettes. Then the computer displays "Do you want to meet a ghost?" Ryosuke asks for help in a computer room the next day, where he meets Harue Karasawa. She concludes that the computer must have been hacked and should next time write down the URL or take a screenshot . In fact, the process is repeated, but Ryosuke loses his nerve; when he can see a man with a garbage bag over his head and the words "Help me" on the wall behind him, he pulls out the plug. Harue, whom he meets alone, is at a loss; a fellow student named Yoshizaki reports similar experiences and more and more ghosts on campus. He explains his thesis that the hereafter is full, and the Internet is the interface to it. Using this interface, the deceased try to escape the afterlife, as there is only eternal loneliness waiting there. This explains the plethora of suicides. Ryosuke and Harue talk about death . There are two of you traveling around on the subway .

The End

Tokyo is empty. Harue is nowhere to be found, and Ryosuke trudges through the depopulated city where a storm is slowly brewing . Something similar happens Michi, the driving around aimlessly, now that all of their acquaintances suicide committed or disappeared into thin air or black flakes. Her car breaks down, Ryosuke meets her and helps with the repair. In a disused factory, they meet a swaying person with a black garbage bag over his head. When she puts down the plastic bag on her own initiative, Harue is among them. Harue immediately pulls out a gun and shoots herself in the head without her being able to prevent it. Ryosuke is looking for gasoline, and instead discovers the “Forbidden Room”, which was recently sealed with red tape. A ghost approaches and reveals that “death was eternal solitude” and begs: “Help me!”.

Ryosuke loses the will to live. You drive on through the cloudy city, which is becoming more and more apocalyptic : a jumbo crashes into a row of houses, the burning houses color the sky brown and gray. The US Army - C-130 -Frachtflugzeug rushes out of the sky. They flee to the sea in a motorboat. They make it to a passenger ship, where they meet the captain who has received radio signals from survivors from Latin America . Ryosuke disappears before Michi's eyes.

Others

According to IMDb , the film had its world premiere on February 10, 2001 in Japan. It was only launched on November 9, 2005 in the United States (Magnolia Pictures). The film was premiered in Germany on DVD on April 28, 2006, and a special edition DVD was released on November 16, 2006.

According to the IMDb, Shūji Asano as visual effects supervisor and Masaru Tateishi as CG director were responsible for the special effects .

Jim Sonzero made a remake in the United States in 2006 under the title Pulse - You're Dead Before You Die (aka Pulse ).

The Japanese film title "Cairo" (回路) has nothing to do with the city of Cairo (カ イ ロ in Japanese), but means switching .

Reviews

Rotten Tomatoes rated Pulse on August 8, 2012 with 48 evaluated reviews with 73 percent, Metacritic on the same day with 70 percent, which received 21 reviews. In the IMDb on August 8, 2012 the film received 6.7 out of 10 points with the votes of 7361 viewers.

  • “[The film] gets under your skin because it makes loneliness and the longing for death in society central themes of horror. The almost motionless camera and the nerve-wracking soundtrack, which sometimes breaks off abruptly to make the silence seem threatening, reinforce the effect. ”- Lexicon of international film
  • "Focuses on the core of the horror definition [...] the interiors are so dark you almost squint to see what's lurking in the shadows" - James Emanuel Shapiro, Reel.com
  • “The most gruesome thing [...] is how these ghosts move. […] There are very few passages that do not evoke a dreamlike horror of the really unknown […] and you never know what you are running from. ”- Anita Gates, The New York Times
  • "And when the apocalypse finally happens, it doesn't do it with a nuclear explosion , but with a huge void." - Jeremiah Kipp, Slant
  • "Kurosawa [...] understands that explanations or results can sometimes ruin a successful work of imagination." - Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
  • "One of the scariest films of all time" - Molodezhnaja.ch
  • "Often it is frightening, but all the fear makes so little sense that, if you add them together, the sum of the horror is less than any virtuoso shock moment." - Ekkehard Knörer , Jump Cut
  • "The people are not trying to find out what is going on [...] nobody turns to the authorities, and by the time the hero realizes that the world is dying, it is already dead. [...] they are not characterized [...] ] These are just working youths [...] and then the final escape into ... well, nowhere . ”- Stephen Hunter , Washington Post
  • "..." Pulse "addresses loneliness in this environment; the danger that the virtual world will literally not let go of people and that they will eventually be locked in a loneliness crystal ... “arte

Awards and nominations

Japanese Professional Movie Awards 2002

  • Japanese Professional Movie Award in the Best Actress category for Kumiko Aso (and for another film)

Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival 2001

  • José Luis Guarner Critic's Award for Kiyoshi Kurosawa
  • Nominated in the Best Picture Category (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Cannes International Film Festival 2001

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This article was based on Jan. August 2008 in parts on a translation of the article from the English language Wikipedia from the same day. A list of the authors is available here .
  2. ↑ a b Pulse in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  3. ↑ James Emanuel Shapiro: Pulse (2001). In: Reel.com. Retrieved on August 28, 2008 (English): “concentrates on the core definitions of horror. [...] interiors are so dark that you almost have to strain your eyes to see what lurks in the shadows "
  4. ^ Anita Gates: Pulse (2001). In: The New York Times . November 9, 2005, accessed on August 28, 2008 (English): “The most horrifying thing […] is the way the ghosts move. [...] there are very few moments that don't evoke a dreamlike dread of the truly unknown. [...] And you never know what to run from "
  5. ↑ Jeremiah Kipp: Pulse. In: Slant. June 20, 2005, accessed on August 28, 2008 : “And when the apocalypse finally does happen, it happens not through an atomic blast but a vast emptiness”
  6. ^ Anton Bitel: Pulse. In: Eye For Film. Retrieved on August 28, 2008 : "an update of the Book of Revelations"
  7. ↑ Jeffrey M. Anderson: Pulse (2001). In: Combustible Celluloid. Retrieved on August 29, 2008 (English): "Kurosawa [...] understands that explanations and payoffs can sometimes ruin a great work of imagination."
  8. ^ Asian Movies - Japan 2001. Molodezhnaja.ch, accessed April 1, 2009 .
  9. ^ Ekkehard Knörer : Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Pulse (Japan 2001). In: Jump Cut . Retrieved August 28, 2008 .
  10. ↑ Stephen Hunter: 'Pulse': A Quiet Game of Doom. In: Washington Post . November 23, 2005, accessed on August 28, 2008 (English): “The characters don't try to figure out what's going on […] no one consults civil authorities, and by the time the hero notices the world is dying, the world is dead. […] They're not characterized […] They're just hard-working kids […] and a final escape to… well, to nothing. "
  11. ↑ arte.tv ( memento of the original from August 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  12. ↑ FIPRESCI - Awards - 2001. (No longer available online.) In: http://www.fipresci.org . FIPRESCI , formerly in the original ; accessed on September 22, 2008 (English / French).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / controling.fipresci.org  
  13. ^ Awards for Kiyoshi Kurosawa. In: IMDb . IMDb.com, Inc., accessed September 22, 2008 .
  14. ↑ Cannes 2001. (No longer available online.) In: http://www.filmfestivals.com . Filmfestivals.com, archived from the original on November 13, 2008 ; accessed on September 22, 2008 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filmfestivals.com