Pulse

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan

Many credit this as starting the J-Horror trend. I really love Kiyoshi Kurosawa's direction and he made one of my all time favourite movies with Cure. This film is more overtly horror and has some very genuinely unsettling moments.

It is also very Japanese. What does that mean? Well I think I've spoken about this before, there are some sections of dialogue that just doesn't sound right to western ears when translated literally. They have a penchant for being what we would consider melodramatic too. This is also a film filled with overt metaphor as text, events probably not meant to be taken literally, like a David Lynch film. I think if you can't see it in those terms you'll just get frustrated trying to frame it in any logical manner.

What it does do very well is use stillness and silence and craft a very creepy atmosphere which subtly builds to an unexpectedly apocalyptic scope. That's right, an apocalyptic ghost horror film that is all a metaphor about isolation and loneliness, the kind that comes from our reliance on technology.

If you want the more jump scare, action packed spoonfed answers approach, by all means check out the American remake, but I find this film far superior. And please check out Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films, especially Cure and Charisma.