Pulse (Kairo) - Kiyoshi Kurosawa

My first comment is that this movie is creepy from beginning to end, and I still don't fully understand it. The film, unfortunately, took a while to get to North America (unless you got a bootleg copy which probably would not do it justice), the movie, I would argue, is very philosophical as well as painfully alarming in the tension between science and the ghost world. Technology, in this instance, becomes a medium for interacting with those that have died, and this is not so far fetched as it seems. What if we could contact our deceased loved ones via dial-up (or high speed in this day in age!)? What would we say? There are many relevant theories established throughout the film, for example, where do spirits go?, what if Heaven, Hades, etc., is finite and the overflow of spirits move back into this world? These are very tangible ideas that the movie attempts to relate, and does so successfully. This is not purely a scare film, it asks the questions that many of us attempt to answer everyday, and considering its date, this movie is far ahead of its time. Ringu was an excellent film, but not as philosophical; I could not, as I was falling asleep last night after having watched Pulse, push the possibilities out of my mind, and yet, perhaps, the possibilities should remain just possibilites, it is not always wise to dabble with concepts that are beyond our understanding, sometimes one just needs to let it be.