Pulse

I saw the original Kairo a year or so ago, so when I heard they were remaking it, I was very interested. I thought Kairo has an interesting premise, but I felt it was lacking something, so I thought maybe the remake would fill in whatever that was. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare any better as a remake, although I did enjoy it a bit more than the original.

In Pulse, a computer hacker finds a new signal and somehow releases a computer virus of sorts, only this time, it can come through and infect real people. People start acting weird and disappearing, committing suicide, or melting into ash. Ghostly figured start appearing, haunting people. Mattie’s (Kristen Bell) boyfriend is one of those affected, and while searching for the truth, she and her friends get drawn in to the dangerous signal. Soon, they search for an answer on how to stop it, but are they too late?

I love Kristen Bell. Veronica Mars is one of my favorite TV shows. Some of the spark is missing here, but she still shines brightest in the cast. Ian Somerhalder is her new friend Dexter, a computer junkie who helps her track down the cause of the pulse and the ghostly figures. He’s also very good (and I will always miss him on Lost). Everyone else is pretty much unnecessary, except for ghost fodder. The atmosphere is sufficiently creepy, and some of the scenes kept over from the original movie (the plane crash, the tower jumper) still get me even though I have seen them before.

There are plenty of plot holes, but overall, it’s an apocalypse movie, so I can’t help but like it. The end made me cringe, if we had done without the cheesy end of the movie voice over, it would have been a much better ending. If you like the original and you want something just as good, I would avoid the remake. It’s really only good for Kristen Bell fans or people like me who love visions of the end of the world. If you do like Pulse, you should check out Cell by Stephen King. It’s a very similar take on the whole evil cell phone idea.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs for Kristen Bell cuteness, Ian Somerhalder’s baby blues, and the very effective Tower scene

The Return

I rented this movie because it seemed like it would be one of those Asian horror movies wrapped up in American cinema packaging. It definitely wasn’t what I expected, but it was still a pretty good movie.

The Return is about Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a young traveling saleswoman who has nightmares and waking dreams about a place she doesn’t remember ever being and a woman she's never met being murdered. Her life is falling apart, with her paranoia interfering with her job and her obsessive ex-boyfriend stalking her. While traveling for work, she finds herself near the town she is dreaming about, and decides to try and track down what it is she is dreaming and who murdered the woman she sees in her dreams. She befriends a man named Terry, who is somehow linked to the murder. Did he kill the woman in her dreams? Is the killer stalking her? Why is she having the dreams at all?

Sarah Michelle Gellar feels a little young for the role, but it’s not too bad. The atmosphere was dreary and stark, and perfect for a mystery. There were some real scares there, and the pacing was good once you get past the weird boyfriend showing up out of nowhere.

Overall, I was disappointed in some of the cuts to the film; I watched the deleted scenes and thought to myself – oh, now I get why that guy was even in the story at all. I know why they made the cuts they did, they wanted to speed the film up, but I really feel the movie suffered for it. I think that this movie would have performed much better in theaters if it had been marketed as the movie it actually is – a mystery/thriller, rather than an Asian horror rip-off. I was pleasantly surprised. As a thriller, it was good; as a horror movie, it lacked.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a surprising thriller in a pretend Asian horror package