Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

April 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 73

Total Comments: 32

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Pulse / Kairo / Japan / 2001

The Magnolia DVD cover sports the murky visage of a ghoul, which does not appear in the film. And the newly minted trailer for the remake is replete with the same sort of apparently malevolent ghouls—these are an embellishment on the original material. In all, Kurosawa’s Pulse is not the visceral horror film that this promotion suggests; it is, however, deeply frightening.

Its subscription to the horror genre is rendered somewhat of an afterthought, but it does employ – if not epitomizes – the characterizing aspects of J-Horror. Several scenes result in tangible dread (I recall few recent films in which I’ve been afraid to look at the screen), but Pulse’s most frightening aspect is its cynicism and alienation. It is for this reason, along with the film’s lack of exploitation, that Pulse doubles as a responsibly sympathetic address to a particular social disillusionment spawned, it contends, in technology.

Matt’s review.

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Magnolia DVD
24 Apr 2006 11:10 AM | Submit Comment

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