Pulse

2001 ‘回路’ Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Do you want to meet a ghost?

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lurks some of its inhabitants who are desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

Haruhiko Katō Kumiko Aso Koyuki Kurume Arisaka Masatoshi Matsuo Shinji Takeda Kenji Mizuhashi Shun Sugata Ken Furusawa Teruo Ono Show Aikawa Masayuki Shionoya Kaori Ichijō Takumi Tanji Jun Fubuki Koji Yakusho Hassei Takano Atsushi Yuki Go Takashima Akiko Kitamura Rie Yasuda Zengoro Mamiana

Alternative Title

Kairo

thriller horror

119 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 3

"...once the system's complete, it'll function on its own and become permanent."
Unbelievable. I need to watch it again, but certainty one of the seminal films of the 21st Century. Indeed a very digital ghost story, one which encourages us to reflect on the new spaces which have been created or transformed since 2000. People interact with computer screens, televisions...but rarely ever phones. Perhaps because there is no screen (or wasn't really in 2001) for a telephone? It's very interesting and telling that the movie's near-climax (only because the movie takes a sudden, very unexpected shift following which I'm still struggling to make sense out of) is in an abandoned factory, an analogue space, and one where ghosts exist in.…
Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★½ 4

Remember when the internet was so new and mysterious we thought it might plausibly contain demons? Now we know it's just full of assholes.
Double feature this with The Midnight After.
Review by Peter Labuza ★★★★ 5

I think the first thing I said to my friend Alex Enquist as I left the theater was that this was “the most Bordwellian movie ever made.” I don’t think the film has that much to say about our relationship to technology – it’s more of a gimmick to get the plot going (essentially Swimfan but never annoyingly so), but so perfectly constructed, where each shot leads into the next shot. Kurosawa jumps 180 degree lines, re-organizes the space of a scene via shots that feel unnecessary and bring us out of the action on screen, and then suddenly it becomes obvious as new information emerges into the frame. This can either be for horror (aka ghoooooooossssssts) or even comedy…
Review by josh lewis ★★★★

imagine if the internet wasn't actually a tool of establishing meaningful connections with one another that we all obviously know and agree that it is but was just another, newer, digital form of the terrifying existential isolation and mortality we've felt from very beginning........ haha........ unless?
think i'm gonna need to come back to this one because it's very good but it didn't quite get under my skin the same way Cure did and as demonstrated by the ending is intending a very different feeling i wasn't expecting of this film. that being said no one's mise-en-scène game is as strong as kurosawa and the use of screens, shadows and cg here makes the digital qualities of this at once tangible and unreal which adds a very unsettling layer to many of the already surreal horror sequences.
Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★

A rare case of a technologically contemporary film (be it horror or any other genre) only becoming more relevant with time. Kurosawa's digital ghost story is actually haunting, as people form connections that only distance them, the living cocooned into ghosts that seek out others to convert but can never seem to keep their turned pals around them. The direction is so subtle that the insistent score only bursts into sound after a ghost appears or something unnerving happens, as if even the composer were caught off-guard. Not scary, maybe, but the melancholy of the picture is as powerful a feeling a film has ever imparted upon me. A masterpiece.
Review by connor ★★★★★ 6

Kurosawa’s Pulse operates on so many levels it’s tough to keep track of. That being said, it is essential to note that this is not a film about the sociological dangers of the internet, or what have you. Rather, it is a film about the degradation of human systems—especially those regarding not only communication but representation—and the means through which loneliness and alienation may proliferate as a virus in the wake of such breakdown. The fact that the internet is the system breaking down here is, as the film itself overtly makes clear, arbitrary. I’m only making a point to clarify this because I think it’s essential to the film’s thematic concerns to understand that the central hauntings here do…
Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★★ 1

probably the best film ever made. one day i will be able to talk about this without crying, but today is not that day. i have depression and this movie understands what it’s like to be depressed and to suffer with your own mind better than anything i’ve ever laid eyes on. i’m not okay tonight, maybe i will be tomorrow, even just for a little while, just a little moment of peace.
Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★★

A modern ghost story, a tale of loneliness/isolation in the era of internet connectivity, or both? Kiyoshi Kurosawa's skillfully directed movie is suspenseful and at times beyond unsettling. It doesn't quite reach the same level as his masterpiece Cure for me, but it's a remarkable movie nonetheless.
Review by Ian West ★★★★ 3

Dreamlike 2001 techno-haze terror infused with genuine scares built on dread and the anticipation of it. Excellently crafted nerve rattling parallel plotline effectiveness and thoughts on loneliness/other topical fears as ghosts enter our realm via the interwebz as a conduit. Right up my alley, probably behind 1997’s Cure as my favorite Kurosawa experience, and I’m thrilled I still feel the same way about it nearly 20 years later—I’d even consider this among the best horror films of that era.
Highly unnerving.
Review by K. Austin Collins

Expressionist shadows can suggest a number of things: what they do for Abel Ferrara, looming quietly throughout his criminal and spiritual urbanscapes, is not what they did for F. W. Murnau's silent, sometimes ironic (The Last Laugh) art. But they almost always, by nature, present themselves to us as the mythic darkness just beyond or behind something real. And while it's usually tempting to understand them through some moral equivalency, sometimes a filmmaker can instruct us to see them as something new, or at least as something else.
When characters die in this film, which happens frequently -- this is an existentialist, near-apocalyptic ghost story in which many people, known and unknown to the viewer, will die -- there are…
Review by Roxanna ★★★★ 4

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

the apocalypse is instigated not by environmental disaster or a plague of zombies, but an isolation so severe that humanity knows nothing else but to die en masse. the last thing we will all know how to do together is perish.
Review by 𝑤𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑢𝑚 ★★★★

e̲v̲e̲r̲y̲o̲n̲e̲ ̲d̲i̲e̲s̲
I’m so tired. I feel so drained. Also got a bitch of a headache rn too. Between helping build a garage and marathoning all the After Dark fest I’m spent. I’ve felt weird here lately. Strangely weird and idk why. Like sick of everything and everyone but I honestly don’t have a clue why. Energy is zapped.
Something I’ll have to deal with on my own unfortunately. Any who this is one of my favorites. I feel it gets so overlooked from other foreign titles. Let me just tell you there is a scene on here so fucking creepy I had to turned on the lights. Legit one of the scariest scenes ever. It’s just the way the woman…

Recent reviews

Review by Bernard Lupiac ★★★½

Japan has definitely managed to capture the aura of mystery that existed in the early years of the internet: along with Serial Experiment Lain and some of the early Shin Megami Tensei games, this movie makes great use of the "whispered rumors of a macabre website" hook.
It has chilling scenes without having to resort to a single jump-scare. The doors with red tape are a memorable leitmotif. Most importantly, the oppressive and bleak atmosphere is very well conveyed by the actors, especially Kumiko Aso.
However it is a very cryptic and heavy experience. I does present very well the theme of isolation brought by technology (even though I usually hate "technology bad" moral lessons). Rewatching this would probably give me better insights into it. But given how heavy this experience is, it'll take me a while.
Review by Francisco Silva ★★★★½

Another ghost movie from the heyday of J-Horror, following on the success of Ring, Pulse is a pretty great, and really creepy movie. As a story it is a bit of a mess, a feature it shares with many of its contemporaries. However, Pulse is also a very original looking and effective horror movie, particularly in its atmosphere and set pieces.
In a world that is marked by isolation, where people live more and more separate from each other, ghosts start appearing in certain places, and those who meet them go through intense trauma that seems to lead at least to deep depression and most often to suicide. This is a really bleak film, there isn't much room for hope…
Review by jameskw ★★★★ 2

Effectively creepy little number of a horror film. Much admired the sophistication it took in demonstrating its scares, something you don’t see much these days.
When I started watching my retarded ass didn’t realise that there were two parallel storylines at play until like 30 minutes in, so that threw me a little and potentially dampened my enjoyment unfortunately so yeah that’s my bad. So for a significant amount of it I didn’t really understand or process what exactly was going on, how the film’s concepts worked etc. but again, that’s entirely my bad.
For something released 20 years ago its themes of isolation and loneliness in relation to the internet have held up pretty well which sets it way…
Review by Nilanjan ★★★★

just completed watching this. around a point in the film, i realized this is a film more about loneliness.
Review by satansflowerboy ★★★★

A perfect example as to why US-based horror still has NOTHING on Japan. Fucked up, slow-burning and chill-inducing start to finish.
Review by riley 🥶 ★★★★★

had this on in the background while i'm writing a paper on it. probably not the best idea to choose one of the greatest films ever made as my focus as im already halfway to my word limit despite only covering like 10% of what i wanted. god kurosawa. gonna put it on again. might just leave it on in the background every day for the rest of my life
Review by FanDeTarkovsky ★★★½

cuando los modems hacian ruidito y nos daban miedo
Review by Riley ★★★★½ 1

We all just so fuckin lonely
Review by Pedro ★★★½

loved the PS2 game aesthetic!
Review by Thomas Koenig ★★★½

This shit kinda rocked but I was too tired to get fully into the end is interesting lol
Review by nahuel🌧️ ★★★★

¿Están ellos realmente vivos? ¿Qué los diferencia de los fantasmas?
Esto literalmente te patea, desde un terror que no recurre a cosas básicas del género, plantea que las personas y los fantasmas no tenemos diferencia alguna, que nuestra vida se puede transformar en estar muertos, en vida. Y el escenario real de la película puede ser cualquier lugar, mi casa, mi habitación, la habitación de cualquier persona. Algo que se mete por tu piel, y te deja un sentimiento que no vas a poder sacarte.
Review by Austin Stockhecke ★★★½

Great story, although the pacing is a little weird