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No Sign of a “Pulse” “Pulse” might very well be the worst “horror movie”(note use of quotations) I have ever seen in my life. While not the most ill-conceived(The Ring 2 wins that dubious honor), it may very well be the worst executed. It’s the type of movie which would make Ed Wood himself—officially voted the worst director in Hollywood history—shrug his shoulders and go WTF?! First of all, Hollywood studios really should pay special attention to the phrase “you can only catch lightning in a bottle once”. When Gore Verbinski and Dreamworks remade The Ring from the original Japanese version Ringu, they somehow managed to capture the eerie creepiness of the story’s tone and actually improve upon it—a major miracle by Hollywood’s standards. However, virtually any J-horror remake since then (The Grudge—ugh!) has fallen far below their expected potential. “Pulse” continues this unhappy trend of making dually substandard films: failing on the one level as an Americanized remake of J-horror, and then diving into the sludge pit once again simply on a storytelling/horror level. Our “story” begins, as so many of these pathetic entries into the genre do(“Stay Alive”), with the surprising death of a beloved partner/friend of the main character. In this case Josh(Jonathan Tucker), the boyfriend of Mattie Webber(Kristen Bell), commits suicide by hanging himself in his bathroom while Mattie can only watch helplessly. Puzzled by his recent detachment from their relationship and seeing no outward signs that he would kill himself, Mattie begins to seek reasons into why he would do so after receiving a bizarre post-mortem text message cry for help from Josh on her phone(by the way, it’s nice to see that Kristen Bell doesn’t hurt herself from stretching any acting muscles by doing essentially the same thing she does on Veronica Mars—sleuthing). Her investigations lead to an encounter with a drifter, Dexter McCarthy (Ian Somerhalder). Dexter purchased the late Josh’s computer from Black Racial Stereotype Landlady #506, played by Octavia L. Spencer. Turns out Josh’s computer had a unique type of virus on it: one which allows ghosts to enter the world of the living and steal their life essences—their souls, as a matter of fact. Here begins the movie’s backwards, 1950’s style of storytelling, blaming all technology for the ills of mankind. The ghosts, I assume, are grateful for the invention of the internet, cell phones, laptops and other technology, as I’m sure they didn’t have any other way to come into our world before the mid-80’s. While Mattie forms an uneasy alliance with Dexter and the pair go about finding out how the virus came about, what they’re up against and how to stop it, her minority friends begin disappearing/dying one after the other. First, Stone(Rick Gonzalez, fresh from Spielberg’s dreadful War of the Worlds remake) slips into a wall, becoming part of it in his dying moments—the ONLY semi-cool effect in the entire film(ICO Entertainment, Live Wire and the Orphanage effects houses—please don’t break anything while you’re busy patting yourselves on the back for that). Part-time rapper/actress Christina Milian, who plays Isabell Fuentes, doesn’t have much to do except what all pretty young minority girls do in this type of film: wear breast-illuminating tight shirts and circulation-cutting pants to plant vague sexual ideas in the heads of young white males…the Jungle Fever approach to storytelling. If you’re wondering why I’m going off on this particular tangent, be aware that yes, while the one other white buddy does have an off-camera death scene, I happen to be particularly disturbed by the deliberate blatancy of the stereotyping of young(and older) minority cast members in this so-called “movie”. Stone is the only one who uses any type of street slang. Isabell immediately goes to bed with someone she just met. B.R.S. Landlady #506 may just as well have come straight off a plantation. It irks me dearly, but believe me, these had less to do with my not liking this film than the simple ineptness of “director” Jim Sonzero(only previous credit: 1999’s immediately forgotten “War of the Angels”). To say that there are plot holes in this “film” would be as obvious and redundant a statement as saying that Captain Kirk is a captain. It’s soon revealed that the ghosts are appearing all over the world, yet we never get to see any materializations/threats in other countries. How come no one else on the planet has yet figured out what’s going on besides Little Mattie Veronica Mars Webber? Why does the color red keep the ghosts out of any room? The explanation for this last is that the color hits a higher frequency that the ghosts can’t attain when traveling via internet or cell phone signal. News flash to Sonzero: internet and cell phone frequencies don’t utilize COLORS for their transit! At one point late in the story, after most of the town has disappeared, Mattie and Dexter finally confront the young man responsible for the impending downfall of humanity: computer expert Douglas Zieglar(Kel O’Neill). It was Zieglar’s initial experiment which somehow unleashed the ghosts, and of course he doesn’t know how to stop it. Another potential message from this movie: twenty-something computer know-it-all geeks will somehow be the death of us all(hurry up and get it over with, if these are the types of movies we’re going to be subjected to). Fortunately, Josh came up with a virus that should be able to crash the system. The only other option should this not work, is for humanity to hole up anywhere where there are signal dead zones where cell phones don’t work and the internet can’t reach(this is the 21st Century…there are maybe five places on Earth where this is possible). Obviously, this movie was not sponsored by AT&T or Microsoft. The actors in “Pulse” are, for the most part, competent—but then again, the dialogue is so unchallenging, a fourth grader could pull it off. The special effects for the ghosts are
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