The Japanese version of "Pulse"
Aug. 4th, 2006 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorhathorMuch babbling about the Japanese original of "Pulse" will ensue, so beware of spoilers.
My overall feelings about the movie, which I watched in preparation for hopefully seeing the American remake coming out next week:
1. I liked it. Didn't love it, but it was alright.
2. Too goddamn slow. What do the Japanese have against editing? Why a drawn-out scene of some guy learning how to log onto the internet? Why do we need to see the whole thing to understand that he's logging onto the internet? Not that I didn't appreciate the part when he sees the license agreement and goes, "What is this crap?", but...
3. This movie did not know what it wanted to be about. It started off a fairly creepy-ass horror movie and eventually became a weird message picture. That ruined it. They could never remake this movie in America as is, which is why they used the best of it and filled in the rest with original ideas, it kind of looks like from the commercials. Which is good, because American audiences would have looked at the movie, if done as an exact remake, and gone, "SuperdoubledeckerHUH?!" I like some artsy-fartsy pictures, but even I was wondering what the hell they were going for with that rather abrupt change.
The basics: "Pulse" is about a group of friends, one of whom commits suicide. He leaves behind some sort of computer disc. His friends try to figure out what the disc means, or something, and that somehow triggers the internet to start calling them, not vice versa. They always see this website on their computer screens when the net calls them, which has creepy movies on it of people in shadowy rooms, just moving really slowly and being generally creepy. People involved start seeing these people, who seem to be coming to get them, who move very, very slowly, and are very shadowy, where sometimes you can't make out any features at all. After you see these people, you usually kill yourself. Everyone who commits suicide leaves behind a black stain that outlines where their body was.
While they are trying to figure out their friend's suicide, the film suddenly becomes a message picture about how the internet is making us all detached from each other and that we'll all wind up lonely because of it. The message is hinted at for a while, but the change from horror movie to message picture was still REALLY abrupt. People start disappearing because they succumb to loneliness. Next thing you know, the world has basically suffered an apocalypse because practically everyone has disappeared. The End. No, really.
Oh, and there's some stuff about the Forbidden Room that's hinted at but never properly explained, which was disappointing since it sounded so goddamn cool.
I thought this idea had some real potential. I'm unhappy with the fact that they went for the message here. Overall, I agree with that quote that says that messages belong in telegrams. A message can often spoil an entire story. Sometimes, if it's not heavy-handed, it can enhance the story, but most of the time, pbbbbbt. Like Stephen King said, you wanna learn something, go to school. The only time you like a message picture is when you agree with the message, and even then...
It's like that Shel Silverstein book that was so amazingly popular when I was a kid, Where the Sidewalk Ends. I loved it, everyone I knew loved it, we all thought they were the funniest poems ever written. Then I grew up and read it again. It's a fucking political book. Like, megaheavy-handed political book. All those clever little poems are just badly disguised political statements. Realizing that totally spoiled the book. The poems weren't cute anymore, they were just annoying.
Anyway, the story should be more important than shoving your opinions down someone's throat.
The thing that kept me watching the movie, besides the little mysteries that you're trying to figure out, was the slow-moving shadow people. Spirits, whatever they're supposed to be, they were fucking CREEPY. ASS. The best way I can describe it is there are these scenes where people encounter shadowy people who move impossibly slow. The people encountering them move at a normal pace, so the mixed effect of slow-moving vs. normal-moving is EXTREMELY unsettling. I can't explain it, it just made me feel very freaked and scared to watch. Like, if I encountered someone coming at me, moving that way, I'd run the fuck away as fast as I could. It was just that creepy. Especially since many of them were shot in heavy shadow; not being able to see someone's face is mega unsettling.
Uhhh oh. I just saw a new commercial for the American remake of "Pulse" and there was the shot of the airplane flying low overhead. Which is part of the "the world is nearly empty since everyone succumbed to loneliness" part of the storyline. Well, I guess we'll see what they do there...
As I was saying, the movie shifts focus to this "loneliness apocalypse" thing. Which is not exactly a bad idea in itself, it just wasn't a proper explanation for what they had begun. I guess since Japan has a high incidence of suicide and suicide pacts, that ending would be much more poignant there. Here, it was like, "Well... that was a strange turn..." We just don't expect horror movies to change like that. The whole tone of the movie changed and everything. It was like someone else took over the movie and decided to do a totally different picture.
Still, I gotta give credit to Japan and Korea for creating some of the scariest goddamn images I've ever seen using very simple ideas. It's very rare that an American horror movie makes it hard for me to sleep at night. Asian horror does it to me regularly! More than once have I gone to bed fearing that something was going to come out of the darkness and grab me after watching a movie made in Japan or Korea. Why I love it for doing that to me, I can't really explain. It just impresses me. :D
My overall feelings about the movie, which I watched in preparation for hopefully seeing the American remake coming out next week:
1. I liked it. Didn't love it, but it was alright.
2. Too goddamn slow. What do the Japanese have against editing? Why a drawn-out scene of some guy learning how to log onto the internet? Why do we need to see the whole thing to understand that he's logging onto the internet? Not that I didn't appreciate the part when he sees the license agreement and goes, "What is this crap?", but...
3. This movie did not know what it wanted to be about. It started off a fairly creepy-ass horror movie and eventually became a weird message picture. That ruined it. They could never remake this movie in America as is, which is why they used the best of it and filled in the rest with original ideas, it kind of looks like from the commercials. Which is good, because American audiences would have looked at the movie, if done as an exact remake, and gone, "SuperdoubledeckerHUH?!" I like some artsy-fartsy pictures, but even I was wondering what the hell they were going for with that rather abrupt change.
The basics: "Pulse" is about a group of friends, one of whom commits suicide. He leaves behind some sort of computer disc. His friends try to figure out what the disc means, or something, and that somehow triggers the internet to start calling them, not vice versa. They always see this website on their computer screens when the net calls them, which has creepy movies on it of people in shadowy rooms, just moving really slowly and being generally creepy. People involved start seeing these people, who seem to be coming to get them, who move very, very slowly, and are very shadowy, where sometimes you can't make out any features at all. After you see these people, you usually kill yourself. Everyone who commits suicide leaves behind a black stain that outlines where their body was.
While they are trying to figure out their friend's suicide, the film suddenly becomes a message picture about how the internet is making us all detached from each other and that we'll all wind up lonely because of it. The message is hinted at for a while, but the change from horror movie to message picture was still REALLY abrupt. People start disappearing because they succumb to loneliness. Next thing you know, the world has basically suffered an apocalypse because practically everyone has disappeared. The End. No, really.
Oh, and there's some stuff about the Forbidden Room that's hinted at but never properly explained, which was disappointing since it sounded so goddamn cool.
I thought this idea had some real potential. I'm unhappy with the fact that they went for the message here. Overall, I agree with that quote that says that messages belong in telegrams. A message can often spoil an entire story. Sometimes, if it's not heavy-handed, it can enhance the story, but most of the time, pbbbbbt. Like Stephen King said, you wanna learn something, go to school. The only time you like a message picture is when you agree with the message, and even then...
It's like that Shel Silverstein book that was so amazingly popular when I was a kid, Where the Sidewalk Ends. I loved it, everyone I knew loved it, we all thought they were the funniest poems ever written. Then I grew up and read it again. It's a fucking political book. Like, megaheavy-handed political book. All those clever little poems are just badly disguised political statements. Realizing that totally spoiled the book. The poems weren't cute anymore, they were just annoying.
Anyway, the story should be more important than shoving your opinions down someone's throat.
The thing that kept me watching the movie, besides the little mysteries that you're trying to figure out, was the slow-moving shadow people. Spirits, whatever they're supposed to be, they were fucking CREEPY. ASS. The best way I can describe it is there are these scenes where people encounter shadowy people who move impossibly slow. The people encountering them move at a normal pace, so the mixed effect of slow-moving vs. normal-moving is EXTREMELY unsettling. I can't explain it, it just made me feel very freaked and scared to watch. Like, if I encountered someone coming at me, moving that way, I'd run the fuck away as fast as I could. It was just that creepy. Especially since many of them were shot in heavy shadow; not being able to see someone's face is mega unsettling.
Uhhh oh. I just saw a new commercial for the American remake of "Pulse" and there was the shot of the airplane flying low overhead. Which is part of the "the world is nearly empty since everyone succumbed to loneliness" part of the storyline. Well, I guess we'll see what they do there...
As I was saying, the movie shifts focus to this "loneliness apocalypse" thing. Which is not exactly a bad idea in itself, it just wasn't a proper explanation for what they had begun. I guess since Japan has a high incidence of suicide and suicide pacts, that ending would be much more poignant there. Here, it was like, "Well... that was a strange turn..." We just don't expect horror movies to change like that. The whole tone of the movie changed and everything. It was like someone else took over the movie and decided to do a totally different picture.
Still, I gotta give credit to Japan and Korea for creating some of the scariest goddamn images I've ever seen using very simple ideas. It's very rare that an American horror movie makes it hard for me to sleep at night. Asian horror does it to me regularly! More than once have I gone to bed fearing that something was going to come out of the darkness and grab me after watching a movie made in Japan or Korea. Why I love it for doing that to me, I can't really explain. It just impresses me. :D
