Cover Art

Credits

Director: Kiyoshi Kurasawa Starring: Haruhiko Kato, Kumiko Aso, Koyuki, Kurume Arisaka, Masatoshi Matsuo, Shinji Takeda Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurasawa Music: Cocco, Takefumi Haketa, Takeshi Haketa Tagline: Japanese horror has a new master Country: Japan AKA: Kairo; The Circuit

When a young woman, Michi, discovers a close friend hanging dead by his neck in his apartment, she is shocked to later see his face on a computer screen. Investigating further, she and a male companion, Kawashima, discover a mysterious website which asks its users - "Would you like to meet a ghost?" Once logged-on the user can then come face-to-face with a dead friend or relative. However, in reality the cyber-apparitions turn out to be malevolent entities that scare the living enough to cause them to commit suicide.

Pulse is a fascinating, imaginatively parochial take on Day of the Dead. Japanese Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa depicts the afterlife as a realm that only has the capacity to house a finite number of souls. As the "population" increases surplus souls are stored in a place called The Forbidden Room - a rather innocuous, rundown building that's sealed up with red tape. When this building is demolished the souls are set free and must compete for space with the living in the three-dimensional world.

Like Liza Merril and Dr. John McCabe in the Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, Kawashima and Michi are at the mercy of an unstoppable supernatural force that has to run its course like a virus. They stumble through their ordeal trying to survive as each frightening, merciless layer of plot skin is slowly peeled back to expose more of the spiritual Armageddon.

Rounding off the package is a teaser, Japanese theatrical and US theatrical trailers, a brief stills gallery and Madman trailers for The Eye, Inner Senses and Dark Water.