Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie is relentlessly dark, with a buzzing, spooky soundtrack: The grim music and noise hardly let up. It includes several deaths by grisly means: a college student hangs himself, while others are consumed by the machine-derived "ghost." All these deaths include screaming and shuddering, and are generally spooky and abstract. A couple of minor characters wield (but don't shoot) guns, demonstrating their desperation. Characters smoke cigarettes and drink; one of the girls sleeps with a guy she's just met at a bar. Some profanity, including one f-word, uttered in despair.
Families can discuss the subjects of depression and suicide. How might the victims have been better able to cope with their psychic pain if they had communicated it with one another? They could talk about the metaphor of the ghosts: lonely, isolated people who literally disappear. They may also discuss the enduring popularity of horror movies and why young people in particular are so drawn to them.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Very dark and moody, PULSE imagines a dire near future for electronic communications. As college students become immersed in their devices -- cell phones, computers, PDAs -- they lose touch with each other, and so, literally, lose themselves.
A self-described "future shrink," Mattie (Kristen Bell, of Veronica Mars) is studying psych at an unnamed urban university. Worried that her boyfriend Josh (Jonathan Tucker) isn't returning her phone calls, she doesn't want to believe her best friend and roommate Izzie (Christina Milian) that she needs to "let go."
The problem of communication is at the center of Jim Sonzero's remake of the 2001 Japanese movie Kairo. While it appears to observe Mattie and her friends from a distance, it's also a study of her interior life, her descent into a sort of abject subjectivity. Josh's suicide inspires her investigation into the cause. Little does she know that he's been "consumed" by a ghost from the machines, a creepy grey sort of death force that seems to emerge from computers and make its victims so depressed that they kill themselves or dissolve into nothingness.
The "virus," as TV reporters describe it, is soon worldwide, shutting down system after system, rendering users so pained and fearful, so "unlike themselves," that they're unable to resist the ghosts. While this bad-machines theme is familiar, the execution is effectively ooky, with a persistent blueish light and buzzy soundtrack.
While adults are ineffective (Mattie's smug therapist [Ron Rifkin] dismisses her concerns out of hand), a computer geek helps Mattie to find the webcam loop that affected Josh. It helps that Dexter (Ian Somerhalder) is very good looking, of course, but he's also clever and determined. He finds images of other dead souls, gazing forlornly from the computer screen, emblems of the future of non-communication.
The ghosts, it turns out, "want what they don't have, they want life." The film frames its horror as if the ghosts are so many Pinocchios, yearning for what seems inherently valuable to humans. Communication has turned consumptive.
Families who like this movie may also like the Japanese original, Kairo, or other j-horror-derived U.S. films, like Dark Water and The Ring. The Net, with Sandra Bullock, is a more standard technophobic thriller.
Rate It!
| Content | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS | adults | kids | ||
Sexual ContentGirls wear revealing clothes; discussion of porn sites at beginning mentions "tranny grannies" and Japanese girls in bondage; one girl appears in bed with a guy after she's slept with him (she puts on her jeans and leaves the room); flashbacks to young couple in bed kissing (his hand on her bare back, otherwise no skin); girl takes bath (only face and shoulders visible). |
 |
 |
||
Violence"Ghosts" emerge from machines and appear to ravage/suck life out of human victims repeatedly; nearly dead cat in closet; a young man hangs himself (close-ups of face and shoes only); car crash; fiery airplane crash; a fall off a rooftop; lost inside "the system," Mattie feels like hundreds of hands are grabbing at her; a couple of guns pointed (one by ghost at self, one by man on street at Dexter); ghost attacks Mattie and Dexter in truck, leaving their faces bloodied. |
|
|
||
LanguageOne f-word; five uses of "s--t," other mild language (including "bitch" and "hell"). |
|
|
||
Message |
|
|
||
Social BehaviorCollege students function without effective adult guidance, feel alienated by their reliance on electronic communication devices. |
 |
|
||
Commercialism |
 |
|
||
Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoCharacters drink (beers mostly), several smoke cigarettes, including protagonist Dexter; verbal reference to "booze" in coffee. |
|
|
||
