Pulse

2001, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan

Content Note: Suicide

Among the directors who rose to prominence during the so-called ‘J-horror’ wave of the late-90s and early-00s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa stands out for the way his films convey an all-encompassing sense of dread. Famous contemporaries like 1998’s Ring and 2000’s Ju-On centre on discrete paranormal phenomena but for Pulse, it is society itself that is haunted.

The premise of the film involves ghosts invading our world via the internet (the kind of tech horror premise borne of societal anxieties featured in many of these films) but the extent of the horror in Pulse is much greater. This kind of ‘decentralised’ horror can be seen throughout Kurosawa’s horror work, notably 1997’s Cure and his short film Chime (one of three he released in 2024) which he distributed as an NFT.

There are moments in Pulse that rank among the scariest of the genre. They are up there with any scene among its contemporaries and eclipse anything in its (regrettable) American remake. But what really sticks out in this film is not any individual moment but the vibe of the whole. This is a film about loneliness and isolation on an industrial scale that has only continued to resonate more in the years since its release.

“There are very few moments in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s fiercely original, thrillingly creepy horror movie that don’t evoke a dreamlike dread of the truly unknown.”—Anita Gates, New York Times