A hacker (Jonathan Tucker) kills himself under bizarre circumstances. It falls to his frazzled girlfriend (Kristen Bell, a/k/a Veronica Mars) and another chiphead (Ian Somerhalder) to get answers about what he’d uncovered: a confusing wireless portal through which the digitally deceased somehow threaten to sap the entire world of its desire to live. That’s also the effect of Jim Sonzero’s tepid remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 Kairo: it slowly drains the viewer of any desire to watch. None of the characters is at all compelling, and those flickering lightbulbs and four-armed digi-spooks just aren’t scary. It’s a shame, because the idea (only hinted at, both here and in the original) that students should have to suffer for all their impersonal technophilia is worth exploring.
On the Web
The official Web site of Pulse: //www.pulsethemovie.net/
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