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RATING |
| 5 |
| DIRECTOR |
| Jim Sonzero |
CAST |
Kristen Bell
Ian Somerhalder
Christina Milian
Rick Gonzalez
Riki Lindhome
Jonathan Tucker
Amanda Tepe
Samm Levine |
YEAR |
| 2006 |
RUNTIME |
| 90 minutes |
DATE REVIEWED |
| 11 / 26 / 06 |
SHOPPING |
| BUY THIS FILM |
| REVIEWER: FrighT MasteR |
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RATE THIS MOVIE:
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RATED BY:
13 FAN(S) |
CURRENT RATING:
3.92 SKULL(S)
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Pulse
This is a remake of the 2001 Japanese film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, which I also gave a positive review for back in '02. Backed by Dimension Films the announcement of a remake came sometime in 2002 and had Kirsten Dunst set to star, but they eventually bailed on the project, leaving it in a limbo stage for a couple years. In 2005 it was back on track with new producers, and a hip young cast. Now having finally seen this film I have to say that it should have stayed in limbo, because this is yet another terrible and pointless remake. In an attempt to score a lot of younger viewers the film was slapped with a PG-13 rating and got Kirsten Bell to star, hoping to get a lot of Veronica Mars viewers. Although they eventually made the $20-million budget back in the full theatrical run, the opening box office was a mere $8-million. I don't know why the studios still use this method to gain viewers, because it's not who stars in it or what rating it has that'll get people interested, but the quality of the film itself.
The film's premise has been altered quite a bit compared to the original, but they did choose to keep some scenes that were in the original, but sadly some actually didn't even make the theatrical cut (but will be on the Unrated DVD). The story follows a few college friends as they attempt to uncover the mystery behind a friend's suicide. We soon learn that he hacked into someone's computer that housed a server containing an experimental new form of Wi-Fi. It turns out that by hacking the system he unleashed evil spirits that somehow crossed over to our world by going through electrical currents from various mechanical devices. These spirits suck the will to live from people, causing them to later commit suicide. This spreads like a virus around the world, essentially becoming an apocalyptic event, forcing people to abandon their electrical devices such as cell phones in order to survive. Interesting bit of trivia -- when the trailer was first revealed actual footage from the original involving a burning plane crashing into the distance
was used, which caused a lot of confusion for fans of the original. This footage would be later removed to show a similar scene from the remake. Most likely the footage wasn't finished when the trailer was released, so the studio thought people wouldn't notice old footage being used instead.
In the original we dealt with a more interesting and creepy premise that involved the spirit world being so full with ghosts that they start leaking out into our world. They lure unsuspecting victims into visiting a website, which would unleash these spirits into the users’ home. Instead of just removing the will to live from people, these spirits would make these people go into an ethereal state of nothingness, causing them to be neither alive nor dead. They do this because once these people do eventually die they will not be able to go into the spirit world being that it's full, so the spirits cause them to be in a limbo state forever. Some key scenes from the original remain in the remake, but tweaked a bit, I would assume, to hope scare American audiences more. One obvious difference is how the spirits are depicted in the remake -- we see them more clearly, where-as in the original these spirits would simply be a blurry shadow that would creep up on you. This method is much more effective in terms of scares, because I was neither creeped out nor scared at anything this remake delivered.
OVERALL
This is yet another horrible and pointless remake. Uneffective scares, terrible story, lame cast; do yourself a favor and see the original and skip this.
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