Post by obliv326 on Aug 13, 2006 23:28:11 GMT -5
so, i saw pulse...
i have wanted to for a while. it must have been a year ago when i saw the first trailers, or pretty damn close, anyway. i think i saw one before saw 2? at any rate, it had some nice looking creepy shots in it, and i was intrigued...i will get to those later...
first off, like everything else nowadays, at least horror wise, it is based on a japanese horror film. if you are a frequenter of this site, you will know how many of us feel about the genre...if you dont know, i am certain it is still on the board somewhere...for the record, i love the scarty moments they produce, as a rule, and like everyone else on the planet, i couldnt tell you a single plot poiont of a great deal of them. kairo, pulse's inspiration, is one of the more incomprehensible j-horror entries. while you probably could, with some patience and a graph of some type, figure out the plot, the fact that it takes so much effort is a bad thing...and again, its not alone. i have seen a website where they actually graph the timeline for "ju-on"...and the US remake is still far from straightforward...
kairo, also, has some genuinely chilling moments. there are some that are just immediately creepy and scary, and some that take a while to sink in....for example, here is a scene where a guy is sitting in a library, and sees a silhouette at one of the stacks, apparently staring at him. no one else seems to notice it. another guy, just a library denizen, i think, comes up and says "you see it too..." and they proceed t have some conversation about it, after which the 'ghost' is sort of chased through the library.
what makes the scene work is the familiarity of the setting, and the creepy thing going on there, in the familiar setting of thelibrary...
this scene, when transposed into pulse, pretty much underlines what is wrong with the film. it is no longer just a library, it is now a 'scary library' shot ion that weird green/blue transfer look, and, eventually, with lights flickering so badly that anyone entering the room would have murdered the mantenance staff, becausae i wanted to...although i dare anyone to tell it was in a library. it was shot in tight closeups, thus draining the setting of its inherent scariness, and taking a genuinely creepy idea and playing iot for a loud, shocking scare of something jumping out of the dark...
or another scene. kairo has a truly frightening shot where a ghost appears from the darkness, walking slowly and almost floating, when the ghpst stumbles, and falls siideways in a completel;y non-human way. i know they shot the same scene for pulse, b/c they showed it in the trailer. however, instead of letting the shot play, they did some 'electronic, editing, static pulse' effect on it....thus runing the scene.
i have never seen a film so poorl;y directed. every choice in the film, be it an actor's performance, or one of the many 'enhanceme ntgs' they did that ruin th3e frightening effects, were mistakes on a monumental level. i feared the worst when there were no screenings for critics, although i understand why. pulse is a disaster. and again, i wanted to like it.
for the record i did see luittlemiss sunshine right before, and it could be that it was also bad in direct relaton to that film...btw, little miss sunshine, a comdey, is also scarier than pulse. its not a horror film, but its a better hoirror film than pulse...
the actors may be good. i have seen ian somehalder in lost. he was good there. i hear kristen bell is good in her show. however, everyione in this film is terrible, in every scene, from start to finish. in fact, the only joy you will derive from this turd is getting to see some of the most annoying chracters in cinema history die...although, man, they evebn screw that up. scenes are staged so poorl;y that they have no impact. there is a scene where a character dies on one of the films signatre moment, and its no more a scare than if they had been sitting at a table, talking.
it is a real shame. films like the grudge and the ring have shown that there can be real, chilling horror made when the two cultural horror syles clash. the people who made this are so stupid, however, that they jettison everything that made the original interesting...or made any of those films, american or japanese, effective. there is no atmosphere, no tone, no suspense. just ignorant, annoying jerks going through the motions, and potentially good scares runied by turning them into loud jolts.
dont see this piece of garbage...if you want to see it, sneak in, so they dont get paid...this is one of those films that deserves to be bootlegged and sold in times square, b/c no one should have to pay to see it.
however, knowing that there are horror fans on this board who will want to see it and will do so anyway, i implore you to do one thing...see it at a huge multiplex, and see it at a time when the descent is playing about an hour later. that way, after you have seen nmore tha enough, and have probably fallen to sleep, you can be jolted awake by yet another red herring noise jolt and leave, just in time to catch a REAL great horror movie.
i am giving it a 1, simply because the shots were in focus and the sound seemed to have been rfecorded com petently. might as well give a point to the poor hollywod jouyrneymen who slaved at their craft for this piece of celluloid turd.
but seriously, from a horror guy, who wanted to like it, it was awful. you arwe more likely to be scared by some n oise in your house or your cat jumping from beneath your bed that anything in this thing, and those things are free. see the DESCENT instead.
or little miss sunshine, like i did...its not a horror film, but it is good...
1 out of 10
i have wanted to for a while. it must have been a year ago when i saw the first trailers, or pretty damn close, anyway. i think i saw one before saw 2? at any rate, it had some nice looking creepy shots in it, and i was intrigued...i will get to those later...
first off, like everything else nowadays, at least horror wise, it is based on a japanese horror film. if you are a frequenter of this site, you will know how many of us feel about the genre...if you dont know, i am certain it is still on the board somewhere...for the record, i love the scarty moments they produce, as a rule, and like everyone else on the planet, i couldnt tell you a single plot poiont of a great deal of them. kairo, pulse's inspiration, is one of the more incomprehensible j-horror entries. while you probably could, with some patience and a graph of some type, figure out the plot, the fact that it takes so much effort is a bad thing...and again, its not alone. i have seen a website where they actually graph the timeline for "ju-on"...and the US remake is still far from straightforward...
kairo, also, has some genuinely chilling moments. there are some that are just immediately creepy and scary, and some that take a while to sink in....for example, here is a scene where a guy is sitting in a library, and sees a silhouette at one of the stacks, apparently staring at him. no one else seems to notice it. another guy, just a library denizen, i think, comes up and says "you see it too..." and they proceed t have some conversation about it, after which the 'ghost' is sort of chased through the library.
what makes the scene work is the familiarity of the setting, and the creepy thing going on there, in the familiar setting of thelibrary...
this scene, when transposed into pulse, pretty much underlines what is wrong with the film. it is no longer just a library, it is now a 'scary library' shot ion that weird green/blue transfer look, and, eventually, with lights flickering so badly that anyone entering the room would have murdered the mantenance staff, becausae i wanted to...although i dare anyone to tell it was in a library. it was shot in tight closeups, thus draining the setting of its inherent scariness, and taking a genuinely creepy idea and playing iot for a loud, shocking scare of something jumping out of the dark...
or another scene. kairo has a truly frightening shot where a ghost appears from the darkness, walking slowly and almost floating, when the ghpst stumbles, and falls siideways in a completel;y non-human way. i know they shot the same scene for pulse, b/c they showed it in the trailer. however, instead of letting the shot play, they did some 'electronic, editing, static pulse' effect on it....thus runing the scene.
i have never seen a film so poorl;y directed. every choice in the film, be it an actor's performance, or one of the many 'enhanceme ntgs' they did that ruin th3e frightening effects, were mistakes on a monumental level. i feared the worst when there were no screenings for critics, although i understand why. pulse is a disaster. and again, i wanted to like it.
for the record i did see luittlemiss sunshine right before, and it could be that it was also bad in direct relaton to that film...btw, little miss sunshine, a comdey, is also scarier than pulse. its not a horror film, but its a better hoirror film than pulse...
the actors may be good. i have seen ian somehalder in lost. he was good there. i hear kristen bell is good in her show. however, everyione in this film is terrible, in every scene, from start to finish. in fact, the only joy you will derive from this turd is getting to see some of the most annoying chracters in cinema history die...although, man, they evebn screw that up. scenes are staged so poorl;y that they have no impact. there is a scene where a character dies on one of the films signatre moment, and its no more a scare than if they had been sitting at a table, talking.
it is a real shame. films like the grudge and the ring have shown that there can be real, chilling horror made when the two cultural horror syles clash. the people who made this are so stupid, however, that they jettison everything that made the original interesting...or made any of those films, american or japanese, effective. there is no atmosphere, no tone, no suspense. just ignorant, annoying jerks going through the motions, and potentially good scares runied by turning them into loud jolts.
dont see this piece of garbage...if you want to see it, sneak in, so they dont get paid...this is one of those films that deserves to be bootlegged and sold in times square, b/c no one should have to pay to see it.
however, knowing that there are horror fans on this board who will want to see it and will do so anyway, i implore you to do one thing...see it at a huge multiplex, and see it at a time when the descent is playing about an hour later. that way, after you have seen nmore tha enough, and have probably fallen to sleep, you can be jolted awake by yet another red herring noise jolt and leave, just in time to catch a REAL great horror movie.
i am giving it a 1, simply because the shots were in focus and the sound seemed to have been rfecorded com petently. might as well give a point to the poor hollywod jouyrneymen who slaved at their craft for this piece of celluloid turd.
but seriously, from a horror guy, who wanted to like it, it was awful. you arwe more likely to be scared by some n oise in your house or your cat jumping from beneath your bed that anything in this thing, and those things are free. see the DESCENT instead.
or little miss sunshine, like i did...its not a horror film, but it is good...
1 out of 10