Pulse Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Pulse Blu-ray Movie Review

Too literal for its own good, 'Pulse' still manages a jolt or two.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 3, 2010

The idea of technology and spirits being intertwined is nothing new. Legends abound about native peoples’ fear of cameras and their supposed ability to suck the souls out of their photographic subjects. Twilight Zone episodes by the fistful featured everything from maniac slot machines to a boy’s dead grandmother contacting him on his toy phone. Little Heather O’Rourke made a catchphrase in Poltergeist after having watched television static and announcing, “They’re here.” So hackneyed has this idea become that many people, especially critics (and you know what they’re like), who saw Pulse when it was released theatrically threw up their collective hands and screamed, “Cliché!” And, truth be told, that really can’t be argued. Pulse is indeed a cliché-ridden film that posits one of those portals between our world and the spirit world that only occur in fright fests. And of course those portals operate through the auspices of modern technology like cell phones and computers. So what else is new? Not much, except for this: as hackneyed and “been there, done that” as Pulse may be, it really is at least a bit better than a lot of people gave it credit for being when it first hit multiplexes in 2007.

Hoary horror film clichés can often make audiences laugh, even as they feel the adrenaline starting to pump through their system. Not having seen Pulse in its original theatrical exhibition, I can’t definitively state whether or not audiences were giggling at certain points, but there is simply no denying that the film does manage to deliver some spooky goods, despite it relying on virtually every time honored trope ghost stories have employed from time immemorial. A hapless man has to (of course) descend to a dimly lit, dank cellar environment which is improbably also a library. Somewhere in the endless stacks of books he hears something. Audiences with any brain power at all know there’s a jump cut coming which will no doubt reveal some sort of hideous spectral presence, but that still doesn’t mean most people will startle when the expected event occurs. Pulse is full of such similarly structured sequences. Two things will occur to most well traveled film viewers: 1) you’ve seen this all before, and 2) it doesn’t matter—it’s still scary.

If you can get past the déjà vu element of Pulse, there’s a reasonably effective thriller here which posits that tormented spirits from “the other side” can utilize high tech gadgetry like computers and cell phones to traverse to our dimension and suck the souls out of those still semi-happily living on this side of the void. Of course the subtext here is that our modern fascination and reliance on things electric and/or wireless may well lead to our eventual demise. Forget blaring news stories about cell phones causing brain cancer; in Pulse, cell phones cause outright death, and not very pretty death at that.

Kristen Bell is our focal heroine Mattie, a young lass whose boyfriend inexplicably commits suicide, and even more inexplicably seems to then be contacting here via some sort of interstellar Twitter account on the computer where messages are limited to a plaintive “Help me.” Into this mystery wanders Dexter, Lost’s Ian Somerhalder, who joins with Mattie to figure out exactly what’s going on and, in best computer geek fashion, try to orchestrate a virus which will keep those darned spirits on their side of internet.

Pulse frankly doesn’t have an original bone in its spectral body, but it does work, at least fitfully, against all odds. Based on the Japanese horror flick Kairo, which was co-adapted by American screen horror vet Wes Craven, the film has a nicely desaturated, hypnotically disturbing look and pace courtesy of director Jim Sonzero and DP Mark Plummer. This is a cold, blue-lit world full of impersonal high rises and dark rooms full of twisted cables, a world where computer monitors are often the only source of light. It’s a fittingly claustrophobic vision of our modern, high-tech world, and it helps to give Pulse a suitably haunted ambience.

What Pulse can’t quite overcome is its depressingly literal take on what really could have been a more intangible threat. As Hitchcock so wisely pointed out, using the brilliant boy with a bomb on a bus sequence from Sabotage as his example, audiences are often frightened more by what might happen, if they’re given enough “inside” knowledge, than by seeing actual mayhem occur. Pulse moves through its paces without any plot surprises, ginning up its fear quotient with editing and soundtrack gimmicks that are almost always effective, but which are going to seem tired to a lot of viewers. The original Japanese films which have generated so many relatively recent American remakes have all had a mythic, almost religio-mystic, aspect to them, but Pulse wants everything in black and white, both figuratively and literally. As anyone who’s sat around a midnight camp fire with a flashlight aimed up under their chin can tell you, ghost stories work best when the imagination is left to wonder what exactly is going bump in the night.

Pulse Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pulse is one of those movies which is so heavily post-processed that one has to take a number of factors into consideration when evaluating its AVC encoded 1080p 2.40:1 image. As mentioned above, director Sonzero and cinematographer Plummer have crafted a cold, colorless, virtually black and white desaturated image for the bulk of this film. There's also two diametrically opposed approaches to contrast, one very low contrast where blacks mush into the foreground objects and conversely, overblown contrast, especially in some of the exterior shots, where whites bloom and fine detail is lost amid the glowing light. So what is one to make of this Blu-ray transfer? From an objective standpoint, I must assume it recreates the theatrical experience (which admittedly I did not "enjoy") to a tee, with blanched colors, abundant grain, and an overall gritty and grimy appearance which will either appeal to you or drive you crazy. In terms of a pristine hi-def image, that simply isn't this film's goal. Still and all, even lovers of these dimly lit horror fests might have enjoyed a more consistent approach to contrast and black levels, which vary widely and keep this BD from getting a higher video score.

Pulse Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I was actually surprised to see our blu-ray.com User Review give a less than stellar report on Pulse's Dolby TrueHD 5.1, because I found a lot of this film's subliminal scariness emanated from its very fine and actually quite effective sound mix. No, there's nothing here you haven't heard a thousand (maybe a million) times before. Jump cuts are accompanied by loud thunks of LFE. Spirits whoosh in from the surrounds and make disturbingly immersive moaning noises. Creepy synth- laden music percolates at the low end of the frequency spectrum. Yes, it's "been there, heard that," but there's no denying the excellent fidelity and judicious use of surrounds throughout this film, something that gets even more impressive in the film's climax when Bell and her beau find themselves surrounded by the evil entities. Dialogue is clear and occasionally directional, though it tends to be anchored in the front channels most of the time.

Pulse Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

A small slate of pretty standard supplements, many drawn from the same interviews, are offered:

• Creating the Fear (SD; 7:03) focuses on editing and sound effects.
• Creating the Phantoms (SD; 5:58) focuses on the visual effects.
• 'Pulse' and the Paranormal (SD; 4:24) features an interview with a real life paranormal investigator.
• Deleted/Alternate Scenes (SD; 12:21) holds the most interest for an alternate ending, which would have been perhaps more disturbing than the one they went with.

The theatrical trailer rounds out the extras.

Pulse Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pulse suffers from a bad case of the clichés. It's still an impressively mounted production, with an interesting, if again cliché ridden, ice blue desaturated look. Bell and Somerhalder make an appealing pair, though they have little to do here other than to run from marauding demons. Pulse is popcorn fare, pure and simple, so if you're in the mood for something of that ilk, this could make an OK evening's rental. Just don't use your cell phone while you're watching it.