Editorials
[Editorial] Why ‘Pulse’ Remains the Definitive Internet Horror Movie
In its opening seconds, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (aka Kairo) reminds us that it’s a movie from 2001. Over the production credits, we hear the unmistakable crackle and whine of a dial-up modem, slowly connecting to the internet. To people accustomed to broadband and smartphones, a dial-up modem feels as outdated as an abacus. But despite its old tech, Pulse remains the definitive internet horror film. Even if the more recent Unfriended movies or last year’s Friend Request feature Facebook, YouTube, and other programs familiar to modern audiences, Pulse retains its power because it knows that the internet doesn’t scare us because of what it changes, but because of what it cannot change.
In most internet horror movies, the web functions like some sort of Hellmouth, a deal we’ve made with the (sometimes literal) devil in exchange for comfort and convenience. The characters in Unfriended: Dark Web can play Cards Against Humanity together without leaving their homes, but the evil hacking group they anger uses those same networks to destroy their lives. Friend Request’s protagonist gains popularity through social media, but Facebook becomes the conduit for a vengeful spirit.
To be sure, Pulse sometimes seems equally alarmist. Its split narrative structure follows two sets of 20-somethings in millennial Tokyo, the first involving three coworkers — Michi (Kumiko Asô), Junko (Kurume Arisaka), and Yabe (Masatoshi Matsuo) — investigating the suicide of their friend Taguchi (Kenji Mizahashi). The search not only reveals Taguchi’s internet addiction, but also the existence of “Forbidden Rooms”: haunted spaces marked by red tape around their doors and windows. After Yabe, and then Junko, encounter ghosts in Forbidden Rooms, they both fall into deep despair, leading to the former’s suicide and the latter’s dissolution into grey pixel-like dust.
At the same time, engineering student Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) finds his computer automatically connecting to the net and playing disturbing videos. A tech novice, Kawashima enlists the aid of computer science major/paranormal researcher Harue (Koyuki), who theorizes that the afterlife has become too full, and now ghosts are making their way through any portal available, including the internet.
As more specters come through the internet and in Forbidden Rooms, suicides and disappearances skyrocket, transforming Tokyo into a literal ghost town. With the rest of her friends gone, Michi eventually joins Ryosuke and Harue, desperate to retain their will to live in an empty world.
That synopsis might imply a story filled with incident, but Pulse is anything but fast-paced. Like most J-horror of its era, the film puts mood over narrative clarity, and that’s particularly true of Kurosawa, whose movies have been described by musician Jim O’Rourke as “existentialist tone poems in the guise of entertainment”. As demonstrated by his tendency to deliver backstory in clunky exposition dumps (if at all), Kurosawa would rather watch people walk through an empty Tokyo city center than explain that a ghost apocalypse has wiped out the city.
That style might frustrate a first-time viewer, but it also underscores the film’s central theme. The audience feels just as alienated from the characters as they do from each other. We don’t know why things happen, we don’t know why people make their decisions. They just do.
Nothing illustrates this distance better than the first Forbidden Room sequence. Yabe enters to find a nondescript cement corridor, empty save for a leather couch above one end. As he studies a clump of red tape on the wall above the couch, Yabe realizes that he’s not alone, and turns around to see the figure of a woman at the opposite end. Her arms swaying with an uncanny vigor, the figure strides toward Yabe, stumbling midway but continuing with unnerving determination. A terrified Yabe scurries behind the couch, but a series of shot/reverse shots show the woman slowly peering at him over the seat, strands of her hair billowed by an absent breeze.
In an interview with Reverse Shot, Kurosawa described ghosts in Japanese fiction as “foreign presences” that you can’t fight or ignore, but have to let “coexist.” That might sound dull, but this scene shows why it’s horrifying. The figure approaches Yabe, but she doesn’t kill or even touch him. The ethereal quality of her pace is unsettling, but nothing in her body or face is grotesque. It’s simply blank and pale, persistently staring.
Ghosts exist. That’s all they need to be scary, to drive Yabe and everyone else who encounters them into states of irrecoverable despair. Neither active threats nor walking memento mori, Kurosawa’s ghosts reveal that death brings no relief from the pain of living. They terrify because they show the characters that no one can truly connect with another person. We are all permanently, helplessly alone.
Pulse explores this theme several ways, some of them clunkier than others. Early in the film, Harue shows Ryosuke a computer program with white dots floating along a blank screens. The dots are like people, she explains: they try to come near each other, but “they never really connect.” She expounds on this idea later, after she’s encountered a ghost, telling Ryosuke that she used to look forward to death because she would be joined with everyone else who passed on. “But in death,” she says, “You’re all alone too.” Ryosuke rejects this claim, repeatedly promising to stay with Harue and refusing to believe in the ghosts, even when he actually sees them. But after stumbling into a Forbidden Room and coming face to face with a ghost, Ryosuke too succumbs to its message: “Death is eternal loneliness.”
Kurosawa makes the point more effectively in his portrayal of everyday life, showing the characters’ inability to connect with one another. After learning of Taguchi’s suicide, Yabe talks about it at a cafe with Junko and Michi, casually telling his friends that he has thought about hanging himself too. Not only do the pair let Yabe’s confession pass without comment, they don’t even look at him, or at one another, at any point in their conversation. When Junko and Harue fall into depression after seeing a ghost, Michi and Ryosuke promise that they’ll stick with their friends and pull through together, but they almost always leave immediately after making the declaration. It’s usually for a good, mundane reason —to make Junko some lunch or to get a tool to help Harue — but the message is clear. No matter how much we want to stand by one another, no matter how much we think we’re helping, we’re constantly abandoning one another.
By the time Harue launches into the movie’s sole Luddite rant, we understand that the problem predates the internet. Continuing her thoughts about loneliness in life and death, Harue shows Ryosuke a wall of monitors, each playing a stream of men alone in their rooms. “Are they alive?” Harue asks of the internet users, “How are they different than ghosts?”
She makes a solid point, one found in everything from local news editorials to net-panic movies of the 90s: the web only gives the appearance of connectivity, but we’re only separating ourselves from one another. But as indicated by the way ghosts manifest in decidedly lo-fi places like warehouses and library stacks, Pulse insists that extreme seclusion exists independent of the internet, that computers are just one of many ways we can isolate ourselves.
One of the movie’s reoccurring images illustrates this inescapable isolation. After Taguchi’s suicide, his friends find a disk containing a picture of him in his room, staring at his computer monitors with his back to the camera. On one monitor, we see the exact same image — an isolated man repeating over and over, infinitely inevitable and infinitely alone. On the other monitor, we see Taguchi’s ghostly face reflecting on the black screen.
Taken by itself, the shot makes a simple anti-internet point, that the web promised Taguchi boundless community, but all he found was his own emptiness. But that’s not the only time we see that picture. It occurs near the start of the film, when Michi calls to check in on Taguchi. It’s the exact same shot, with the same yellow haze and Taguchi standing still, but it’s accompanied by a ringing phone. Phones are just as useless as computers, the scene tells us. We’ve always been alone.
Ultimately, Pulse suggests that no medium can overcome the solitude fundamental to human existence. Kurosawa extends this point to the medium he’s using, making us viewers just as alienated as the characters. He shoots many scenes as long, unbroken takes, with the camera peering through windows or behind plants, keeping distance from his subjects. He only lets the camera approach a character or take one’s point of view during a haunting: we watch Taguchi ignoring Michi’s phone call as he stares into his blank screen; we take a ghosts perspective as Harue clutches its face and begs for connection; we look through Ryosuke’s eyes as a ghost’s face becomes too close and clear for him to ignore.
While the innovative “computer screen as movie screen” effect in Unfriended or in the upcoming Searching may give those films a level of realism, putting viewers in the place of characters as they encounter online monsters, Pulse’s camera work better illustrates the terror of the internet. It’s not the innovations offered by newer apps and impressive technology. It’s our human loneliness, something no technology can cause or overcome.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Evil Dead Burn.
Fans of The Evil Dead franchise have become accustomed to an excess of gore. From the low-fi horror of Sam Raimi’s 1981 original and the slapstick comedy of Army of Darkness to Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake, which literally ends in a rain of blood, grotesque dismemberment and comedic violence are as important to an Evil Dead film as the outline of Bruce Campbell’s iconic jaw.
Sébastien Vaniček‘s franchise installment, Evil Dead Burn, follows suit with wall-to-wall violence and set pieces built around extreme carnage. As the Deadites rise once again, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) must fight to the death against her possessed in-laws hell-bent on punishing her for their family’s sins.
Co-written by Vaniček and Florent Bernard, Evil Dead Burn follows the ill-fated Price family, descendants of Dr. Benjamin Price who discovered an ancient dagger capable of sending Kandarian demons back to hell. Newly uncovered from its protective spell, this dagger has called to the evil dead and led them to the family’s ramshackle home. Keeping plot to a bare minimum, Vaniček fills nearly every scene with powerful Deadites and their dastardly acts as they torture the Prices to find the weapon. Horrific moments like a woman drinking hot wax from a lit candle and a shocking post-credits child murder don’t even crack the top ten of disgusting, painful, and disturbing carnage that floods the film.
In any other franchise, we would be listing the film’s most gruesome kills. But fans of Evil Dead know that when we’re talking about the Necronomicon, mere death is only the beginning.
10 ) Deadites Burn
Though Burn checks off all the Evil Dead boxes, its story is a franchise anomaly. Rather than possessing anyone who crosses their path, Vaniček’s Deadites have set their sights specifically on an unwitting clan, intent on recovering the powerful dagger. Resurrected from a nearby lake, Deadite Jessica (Greta van den Brink) informs us of this plan while murdering the eldest Price son. Will (George Pullar) is speeding down a deserted road when he slams into the malevolent demon standing in the middle of the road. After his car rolls off the deserted road, he awakens to find himself upside down, a strange woman lodged in his cracked windshield.
As he desperately tries to reach his phone, Jessica slowly twists her head, tearing the skin of her distended neck. Completely detached from her shattered body, the demon’s head rolls out the window and begins chanting a Kandarian curse. Will’s car bursts into flames as Jessica vows to seek out the rest of his family. While burning alive, Will learns that he is merely the first on a deadly hitlist filled with the people he loves most.
9) Dinner from Hell
Despite a remarkably streamlined plot, Vaniček hints at the Price family’s extensive dysfunction. An uncomfortable dinner erupts in aggression as they gather for lunch after Will’s funeral. Mother Susan (Tandi Wright) berates her recently widowed daughter-in-law while father Edgar (Erroll Shand) — already under Kandarian influence — blames younger son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) for his eldest son’s death. No one is safe as long-held tensions break through to the surface and family secrets ricochet through the air.
With Edgar behaving erratically, Alice and Thya (Luciane Buchanan), Joseph’s girlfriend, try to move sharp objects out of his reach. But Edgar manages to get a hold of a fork and turns his rage on the family dog. As he stabs Max repeatedly in the face, Joseph tries to pull his father away. Both are injured in the struggle and rush to the hospital, leaving Susan and Alice to deal with the corpse. A horrific moment of animal cruelty, this scene sets up a no-holds-barred film in which anyone can be brutalized. But perhaps most disturbing is the viciousness already lurking in this troubled family, barely concealed resentments that existed long before the Kandarian threat.
8 ) Bathroom Brawl
As Deadites possess the Price family, Alice barricades herself in an upstairs bathroom. She reluctantly shields her mother-in-law, despite Susan’s atrocious behavior. Almost immediately, Alice regrets this decision when the woman reveals the depths of her hatred. She rejects clear evidence of Will’s domestic abuse, continuing to blame Alice for their troubled marriage. Leaning her cheek against a scalding hot radiator, Susan submits to Kandarian possession and becomes a Deadite before our eyes. Though disturbing on its face, she seems to choose possession over an honest reckoning of her family’s dark secrets.
Now a Deadite, Susan attacks Alice with broken shards of the toilet bowl and wraps the shower curtain around her head. Scampering across the ceiling, she hangs her daughter-in-law by the neck with the plastic sheet as Alice desperately gasps for air. With only her hand free, Alice gouges Susan’s face with a safety razor, finally managing to break herself free. As Deadite Susan taunts her from the corner, Alice revs up a brush trimmer and plunges the circular blade into her shoulder and chest. We cheer for Alice as she finally pushes back against Susan’s passive-aggressive disdain.
7) The Pen is Mightier
In a sea of blood-splattered dismemberment, one scene is so tense that it makes us squirm despite its lack of visual gore. With the family’s ailing matriarch possessed, Deadite Polly (Maude Davey) attacks Alice in the upstairs hallway, pressing her face against the bush trimmer’s still blade. Insisting that Alice has caused Will’s death, Polly invites the grieving woman to avenge her child by turning on the power tool. An instant before her mother-in-law can send the blade tearing into her cheek, Alice manages to escape by jamming a shard of glass into Polly’s eye. But not before the elderly demon can deliver a cringe-worthy injury.
Though Alice struggles with all her might, Polly slowly drives a fountain pen into the younger woman’s ear canal. Ringing blots out all other sounds as Alice’s face twists in pain. We imagine a tiny object bursting through our own eardrums, puncturing the soft tissue lying beneath. Though Alice tries to extract the pen, she only succeeds in breaking it off, leaving half of the quill buried in her ear. She will eventually use tweezers to remove the tip, sparking another moment of deafening agony.
6) Chekhov’s Dishwasher
As Susan prepares for the aforementioned family meal, Vaniček drops a delicious bit of foreshadowing. While the grieving mother thaws frozen food, she absently fills an old dishwasher whose door has long since busted its latch. Reminiscent of a scene from Final Destination, the faulty appliance falls open, leaving a shelf full of gleaming forks and knives suspended a foot above the floor, just waiting for their moment to strike. After returning from a fatal incident we’ll discuss in a moment, Deadite Thya returns to the Price home, hell-bent on retrieving the powerful knife.
As she advances on Joseph, the frightened son retreats to the kitchen and brandishes a carving knife, subtly nodding to an ultra-violent kitchen scene in Álvarez’s Evil Dead. But Thya will not be deterred. Advancing on her boyfriend, the Deadite startles him into tripping on the outstretched door and impaling himself on the upturned utensils. She presses Joseph further onto the blades while he plunges a corkscrew into her throat. But even this will not stop the maniacal demon, who rips her throat open with the wine tool, dripping her blood over Joseph’s upturned face. Adding insult to injury, she marvels at his willingness to kill the woman he professed to love, casting a pall over their entire relationship. Not only gruesome and excruciatingly tense, but this moment plays into Joseph’s insecurities as the failed son of this disturbed family.
5 ) On the Lake
Evil Dead Burn begins on a seemingly peaceful lake overrun with lurking Kandarian demons. Jared (Keanu Karim) is trying to enjoy a quiet day of fishing but can’t stop his friend Leo (Victory Ndukwe) from answering the phone. Along the dock, Jared notices a bite on Leo’s reel and eventually pulls up a severed head savvy viewers may recognize from Lee Cronin’s 2023 sequel Evil Dead Rise. Moments later, Jared finds himself ensnared by reels, hooks digging into the corner of his mouth and eyelid. As the fishing line wraps around his neck, he’s dragged, screaming, into the lake.
Leo returns in the pouring rain and sees Jared desperately calling for help. He quickly boats out to save his friend, but a mysterious force pulls him down into the depths. Leo finally drags Jared back into the boat, only to see that his body has been cut in half, intestines spilling out of his bisected waist. As he struggles to make sense of this carnage, Deadite Jessica emerges from the lake and capsizes the boat, her clenched demon hands causing the water to boil. Though Leo manages to swim to shore, his skin is a blistered and bubbly mess. Deadite Jessica absently steps on his hand, easily peeling away flesh like overcooked meat. This jaw-dropping opener not only sets the stage for a brutal film, but situates the story in franchise lore while simply explaining the Deadites’ return.
4) Car Trouble
The shocking trailer to Evil Dead Burns shows the aftermath of a vicious attack. As Deadite Thya crosses the family threshold, the camera reveals a car’s headrest still impaling her face. But this devastating sight merely hints at the cruel circumstances of her actual death. Incapacitated in the disastrous family dinner, Edgar slumps in the backseat while Joseph tends to his wounds. Though seemingly incapacitated, the possessed father snaps to attention and wraps his seatbelt around Thya’s neck, pushing against the back of her seat. Joseph holds a gun to his father’s head, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
As Thya tries to escape the car, Edgar viciously slams the door, severing four of her fingers. She manages to trigger a fire extinguisher, filling the car with cloudy white chemicals and giving Joseph a chance to escape. But Thya is not so lucky. Trapped in the car, she screams as Edgar pummels her with a detached headrest, stabbing the poles through her neck and face. Joseph watches from a safe distance as his father beats his girlfriend to death, knowing he was unable to save her life.
3) Head Shots
When Deadite Thya comes stumbling back home, Joseph believes he’s seen the worst. Unfortunately, his misery is only beginning. After fighting off his newly-sadistic undead girlfriend, he tries to flee with his surviving family, only to find Deadite Edgar blocking his path. Flanked by Deadite Max, Edgar taunts his son by insisting that he should be dead in Will’s place and confirming the young man’s greatest fears. Edgar then does what Joseph could not and shoots himself in the head.
The family screams in horror at this devastating sight, then freezes in stunned silence as Edgar does not fall. Grinning, the maniacal father shoots himself twice more, blowing gaping holes in the sides of his head. For the rest of the film, Deadite Edgar will terrorize his family with these unthinkable wounds, even tempting his wife with a bloody kiss. Vaniček mixes emotional devastation with gore as Joseph must watch his father’s suicide while confronting the truth of his own ineptitude.
2) Down Through the Chimney
Along with references to the beloved Ash (Campbell), it’s become tradition for an Evil Dead film to reference the franchise’s signature weapon. But Vaniček subverts our expectations when Edgar’s chainsaw is out of gas. Instead, Alice employs a rusty bush trimmer to fight off her Deadite mother-in-law. Unfortunately, the extended weapon only shreds her flesh, leaving the monstrous woman still able to fight. Trapped in the attic, Alice must clamber out of an upper window with Deadite Susan hot on her heels.
Having dropped the ceremonial knife off the third-story roof, Alice has no choice but to improvise. Toting the bush trimmer, she inches her way down the chimney, pausing to turn halfway down. As Susan follows her daughter-in-law down the chute, Alice turns on the bush trimmer and waits for impact. Vaniček brings us into the living room as buckets of blood and dismembered body parts begin to rain down over the hearth. It’s the kind of moment Evil Dead fans love, gleefully gory carnage via an unexpected power tool.
1 ) Goodbye Stranger
Despite this plethora of grisly gore, Vaniček’s final act tops the list while delivering a poignant beat of empowerment. With the house on fire and the Deadites subdued, we believe that Alice is finally safe. But as she watches the Price home burn to the ground, the corpse of her husband walks out of the flames. He taunts her memories of their abusive marriage, insisting that she stayed because she likes the pain. Demanding the sacred weapon, Deadite Will chases Alice to a construction site and into an open hydraulic press. In the fall, Alice impales her ankle on a massive spike, leaving her trapped as the pit fills with boiling hot tar.
But Alice finds the strength to save herself and pulls her ankle off the bloody spike. She distracts Will with a decoy knife, then pummels his chest with a jackhammer. Exacerbating her emotional pain, Deadite Will reminds her of his love. But it seems that Alice has had enough. She stabs him with the ceremonial blade, then crushes his head as it turns to ash. It’s a well-earned moment of empowerment as our final girl vanquishes her most powerful demon.
Vaniček’s crowd-pleaser continues the Evil Dead trend of gleefully crude massacres. Two extra scenes hint at a continuation of this gruesome massacre, promising more brutality in films to come.
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