Pulse 2

I will try to be really brief, because I'm dying of exhaustion and this movie really wasn't that great. I mean, really. I only watched it because a) it's a horror movie and my expectations weren't that high and b) my roommate kind of forced me. It's the only horror movie we will ever watch together, I think, because she hates them and only wanted to watch this one because it has Jamie Bamber (her celebrity crush) in it. Jamie Bamber's also in the recently ended Battlestar Galactica, which she is also super crazy about.

Anyway, Pulse 2 is obviously a sequel, adapted from the Japanese horror movie Kairo, or Pulse to the English world. To be fair, the original was much praised and was pretty original and thought-provoking, which is rare for Asian horror movie these days. Maybe someday I'll write a proper tribute to it, but currently I'm talking about the horrendous Pulse 2. Horrendous for the completely wrong reasons.

To recap, Pulse was about ghosts who spread though technology (computer, internet, cell phone, etc) and infect people and make them turn to dust and become ghosts. The original makes a statement about the loneliness of the modern world, where no one knows who their next-door neighbor is and your best friend is someone online you've never met face-to-face. Soon we all lose our mind ... and our existence to that hungry loneliness that sucks people in. And the worst part is, ... it's not much worse than our previous daily existence anyway.

The American version of Pulse was less ambitious in that aspect but had some nice visual effects. This sequel, however, is even less confident about the size of the crowd it would draw. There is almost no visual effect to speak off, the cinematography and production design are... amateur at best. The storyline makes no sense, starts to make a little sense, then loses the train of thought all over again. All in all, just horrible.

I won't even bore you with a synopsis, since I myself don't really know what happened. Jamie Bamber is a divorced father who's trying to keep his little girl safe from the mother, who has apparently gone to the other side. There, I've ruined the one semi-surprise the movie had in store for you. Oops. It's not like the mother was sooooooooo lively and cheery that it's a shocker that she's already dead. From the start she just absolutely stinks with negative energy.

Oh, did I mention the acting and the script are also quite hard to accept? And I had a low expectation to start with. Final verdict? Got an hour and a half to waste? Take a breath, make sure you have no work due tomorrow, and go watch Kairo the original. It takes some patience and there are slow spots, but the absolute sense of despair and desolation you get is more than worthwhile. If you are a horror fan, that is.