What Pulse (2006) Doesn’t Understand About Pulse (2001)

The turn of the century offers wonderful films mediating on the digitization of the modern world, imagining and foreseeing the impact of screens on our daily lives. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001) explores loneliness in the digital age through ghosts, visualizing loneliness as contagious and fatal as more people succumb to isolation. Jim Sonzero’s 2006 remake takes the premise, but, like many others fails to live up to the original with his failure to consider the role of technology in shaping modern loneliness. Instead, the remake is barely an imitation with a half-baked, vague science-fiction / supernatural horror plot.

In Pulse (2001), two sets of characters discover that the people around them taking their own lives after exposure to a mysterious site that offers footage and images of isolated, run-down rooms, sometimes with people or figures in them. As characters begin to investigate, they discover that ghosts are materializing from the digital to the physical world, haunting victims through a spell of isolation that drives them to suicide. Kurosawa portrays these hauntings through an atmosphere of sustained dread that builds from the abandoned state of liminal spaces into hard-earned climaxes. From dim bedrooms, abandoned arcades, and run-down warehouses, the spaces in Pulse become perfect backdrops for a world drained by the digital age. The conflation of reality and screen reflects in the cinematography through the use of concrete windows and frames. The movie ends with an awareness of its own medium, as the scene slowly shrinks against a black screen and flickers away.

Kurosawa’s Pulse dates itself clearly, with Kawashima, a university student, writing down instructions on how to access a page and save it, revealing Kurosawa’s foresight into the worsening loneliness epidemic that is more prevalent than ever. The lingering loneliness permeates through the screen, as Kurosawa takes his time showing the characters’ descent into unbearable isolation. There are two sets of characters in the film revolving two protagonists: Michi, a plant-shop worker, and Kawashima, a college student. Michi and Kawashima both experience loss as the people around them disappear incrementally, showing how universal desolation can be. 

One of Kawashima’s cohorts, Harue, is a graduate student computer science student, who is aware of the ghosts’ permeation into the modern world but does not end up escaping their spell. In one scene, told in between cuts of Harue in both reality and on-screen, Harue embraces something we cannot see, and tells herself “I am finally not alone” before disappearing. Kurosawa considers the illusion of companionship found through the digital realm and how people lose themselves in finding solace in the hyperreal as technology makes its way into our daily lives.

In Sonzero’s Pulse (2006), the premise of ghosts emerging from the digital world remains, though not with the same consideration of the modern world, nor the sense of dread and atmosphere and Kurosawa maintains. Instead, Sonzero’s film is filled with jumpscares and intense special effects of mutilated creatures that drains the life out of its victims. Its cinematography pales in comparison, adopting a high-contrast, low-saturation color grade, barely a mimic of Kurosawa’s carefully considered spaces. 

In the remake, a virus is responsible for the infiltration of ghosts into the world. Mattie, a college student, visits her boyfriend, Josh, only to witness him commit suicide shortly after. Even after his death, she still receives messages from Josh asking for help, a cheap allusion to the original where ghosts also asked for help. In the original, because of the overarching theme of loneliness, it made sense that ghosts and the people afflicted asked for help. However, in the remake, this is only used to further the plot, and draw half-baked suspense at the mysterious, sentient online entity. Mattie begins to investigate with another student, but by then, the virus has been hacked and distributed to others. They try to fix it through a counter-program, but fails, and the city is overtaken by spirits.

The virus, explained as existing in “frequencies no one knew existed” has created a way for spirits to enter the living world, and these spirits take away a person’s will to live. Pulse then becomes a supernatural, sci-fi horror of characters losing to a project gone wrong, fully ignoring how the original considers implications of what technology can do to us. The remake is a weak imitation of the original, drafting a weak sci-fi plotline with jumpscares and scattered unsettling imagery. Sonzero doesn’t seem to be thinking about the loneliness present in Kurosawa’s original, instead opting for cheap scares. 

Even as a stand alone, Pulse (2006) doesn’t suffice. The exposition drags on for the first portion of the movie, perhaps in an attempt to recreate some of the original’s slow, stacked suspense, but does so without success. It’s difficult to suspend our disbelief for the virus plot, it uses poor effects and jumpscares without any lingering dread, and it ends on an abrupt note, with a couple lines hinting at the desolate state of the world after invention gone wrong. Technology 1, Man 0.

It’s well-known and unsurprising that most remakes fail to live up to its original. This is particularly the case for American adaptation of foreign films, which are usually quick cash-grabs riding on the valorization of original films that took proportionately more consideration and risk. Pulse (2006) did what it wanted, surpassing its budget at the box office, but has faded into obscurity except for the rare instance it is brought into a losing comparison to the original. 

The ideal remake should contribute to the conversation and expand on the original, perhaps from a fresh perspective or newfound wisdom with the passage of time, but Pulse (2006) does not of that. Sonzero’s remake neglects what made the original so memorable, with its lingering, dreadful atmosphere, its consideration and portrayal of the characters’ loneliness, and the permeation of technology into our daily lives. What Sonzero seemed to get from Kurosawa’s original is the idea of man vs. technology, setting up technology as an undefeatable villain, but none of the style or soul at the heart of the original.