Pulse (2001)

Overview

“Pulse,” Japanese title “Kairo” (Circuit) is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film directed and written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It runs 118 minutes.

Centered on two perspectives — Michi Kudo, a woman who works for a company that sells houseplants, and Ryosuke Kawashima, a university student who has just begun using the internet — the film depicts the collapse of the world as people disappear one after another, triggered by a mysterious website that asks, “Would you like to meet a ghost?”

Production: Daiei, Nippon Television Network, Hakuhodo, Imagica.

Executive producer: Yasuyoshi Tokuma.

Producers: Shun Shimizu, Seiji Okuda, Ken Inoue, Atsuyuki Shimoda.

Distribution: Toho.

Cinematography: Junichiro Hayashi.

Music: Takefumi Haketa (composer), Toru Wada (music producer).

Theme song: Cocco, “Hane: Lay Down My Arms.”

Principal cast: Haruhiko Katō (Ryosuke Kawashima), Kumiko Asō (Michi Kudo), Koyuki (Harue Karasawa), Kurume Arisaka (Junko Sasaki), Masatoshi Matsuo (Toshio Yabe), Shinji Takeda (Yoshizaki), Jun Fubuki (Michi’s mother), Shun Sugata (the company president), Show Aikawa (the construction worker), Kôji Yakusho (the ship’s captain).

Language: Japanese.

Trailer

Plot Summary

Michi Kudo, an employee at the houseplant retailer “Sunny Plant Sales,” visits the apartment of her coworker Taguchi, who has failed to show up for work, and discovers that he has hanged himself. A floppy disk he left behind contains a strange image of a dark room.

Yabe and Junko, colleagues of Michi’s, also succumb to fear after entering a sealed-off “forbidden room” marked with red tape, and vanish, leaving black stains on the walls behind them.

When Ryosuke Kawashima, a university student, tries to connect to the internet at home, his computer connects on its own to a mysterious website that asks, “Would you like to meet a ghost?” Suspicious, Kawashima consults Harue Karasawa, a science and engineering student at his university. Harue’s senior, Yoshizaki, proposes a hypothesis: the spirit world’s capacity to hold souls is finite, and once it reaches its critical limit, the ghosts that overflow begin to encroach on the world of the living.

The phenomenon of people vanishing spreads through the circles around Michi, Kawashima, and Harue, until Tokyo as a whole, and eventually the world itself, becomes an emptied ruin devoid of human presence.

Commentary

Production Background

After establishing his reputation both domestically and internationally with his previous film “Cure” (1997), Kiyoshi Kurosawa returned to the horror genre with this film. It is said that from the planning stages, there was a concept of linking the motif of “ghosts” with the internet, a new medium that was then spreading rapidly.

The cinematographer was Junichiro Hayashi, who had also shot Hideo Nakata’s “Ring” (1998); the heavily shadowed visual style characteristic of J-horror carries over into this film as well.

The Spirit World and the Internet as a Subject

The film was released in 2001, a period when the internet was beginning to spread widely in Japanese households. Dial-up connections, floppy disks, early-generation websites, CRT monitors, and internet-enabled mobile phones are vividly reflected in the film’s depiction of the internet environment of the time.

Behind the subject of “the spirit world and the internet” lies a historical backdrop: an affinity between early-1990s internet culture and spiritual mysticism. As the American cultural critic Erik Davis has observed,^[1] the cyberculture of the West during this period was steeped in a networked mysticism rooted in hippie rave culture and New Age thought, with the concept of “cyberspace” frequently linked to disembodied consciousness or a transcendent realm.

In Japanese pop culture as well, from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, an imagination that connected the internet, as a new medium, to the afterlife or to the spiritual realm enjoyed considerable currency.

It is against this backdrop that the film has sometimes been compared to the television anime “serial experiments lain” (1998), which depicts the boundary between the real world and networked space growing increasingly uncertain, triggered by an email from a dead person.

Locations

The story is set in Tokyo and its surrounding areas. Ordinary living spaces — the apartment complex where Taguchi lives, the houseplant company where Michi works, the university campus, an abandoned factory, a construction site — are gradually transformed into an uninhabited ruin over the course of the film.

Cinematography and Special Effects

The film as a whole employs the “silver retention” (gin-nokoshi) process, which produces high contrast and desaturated color.

Scenes such as the suicide by jumping and the plane crash used computer-controlled motion-control cameras. Visual effects were supervised by Shuji Asano, and special makeup effects by Yuichi Matsui.

In depicting the ghosts and the unfolding disturbances, the film largely avoids CG and jump scares, instead emphasizing atmosphere and unease: the unnatural physical movements of the actors, the grainy, webcam-like texture of certain footage, black silhouettes appearing as substantial presences in everyday spaces, black stains left on walls as traces of vanished people, and the uncanny sight of a depopulated city. Together, these elements evoke fear and sustain a persistent sense of dread rather than relying on shock.

In particular, the scene in which Yabe encounters a ghost in the forbidden room has been widely praised for generating fear without relying on jump scares or loud sound effects; Scott Tobias, writing for “The A.V. Club,” described it as “arguably the signature sequence in all of J-horror.”^[2] The ghost in this scene was played by the contemporary dancer Akiko Kitamura, whose unnaturally jointed movements lend the figure an inhuman quality that greatly intensifies the scene’s unease.

In the scene in which Kawashima confronts a ghost inside the forbidden room of the abandoned factory, a black silhouette with only its face rendered in white slowly approaches him. As the ghost draws nearer, its initially blurred face gradually comes into focus, culminating in a close-up in which focus shifts to its wide-open eyes.

The Substantialization of Ghosts in J-Horror

So-called “J-horror” films from the late 1990s onward — “Ring” (1998), the “Ju-on” series (2000– ), among others — departed from earlier ghost-story cinema by increasingly presenting ghosts on screen as substantial entities. Visual signifiers such as long black hair, pale skin, and unnaturally jointed movement became conventions of the genre during this period.

The depiction of ghosts in “Pulse” is positioned within this lineage. In the scene in which Kawashima confronts the ghost inside the forbidden room of the abandoned factory, he reaches out to touch it and is startled to find that it is tangible; the ghost tells him, “I am not an illusion.”

Kurosawa, however, places greater emphasis on generating a slow-building, sustained sense of fear and unease through prolonged stretches of stillness and silence before a ghost appears, and through the emptiness of a space in which nothing happens, rather than through the design of the ghosts themselves — a point that marks a degree of authorial distance from the genre’s conventions.

Loneliness as Existential Anxiety

The historical backdrop of the film also included a social anxiety: the sense that the “connection” offered by networks might, in practice, isolate people. An environment in which networks connect people to one another paradoxically foregrounds an anxiety over isolation. No matter how connected one becomes to others through the internet or a mobile phone, one cannot escape the solitude of being a single individual. This existential anxiety serves as the core motif running through the entire film.

The Fear of Death and the Fear of Loneliness

Two distinct registers of fear run through the film. One is a direct fear of “death,” evoked by scenes of suicide, disappearance, and encounters with ghosts. The other is a fear of “loneliness,” crystallized in Harue Karasawa’s question: “What if you’re still alone even after you die?”

The film suggests that the ghosts’ purpose is not to kill human beings, but to keep them alive forever, trapped within loneliness. This premise causes the center of gravity of the film’s fear to gradually shift, from the classic horror theme of the loss of life toward a more contemporary, existential theme: a loneliness from which one can never escape, no matter how connected to others one becomes.

This thematic shift also appears in the words of the ghost Kawashima confronts in the forbidden room of the abandoned factory near the film’s end. The ghost says, “Long… death was eternal loneliness…” — a line that suggests a rupture between death as a singular event and loneliness as an unending, persisting condition.

On the Interpretation of Harue’s Death

The film leaves deliberately ambiguous exactly when Harue dies, and interpretations differ.

First, there is a mysterious scene, captured on a webcam, in which Harue — after riding a deserted train with Kawashima in an attempt to escape the unfolding catastrophe — returns home alone and says, “I’m not alone,” smiling as she reaches into empty air as if embracing someone (why she has been freed from the fear of loneliness is never made explicit). She subsequently goes missing.

Later, Kawashima and Michi find Harue at an abandoned factory. Harue presses a handgun to her jaw, fires, and collapses.

While this scene appears to depict Harue’s suicide at the factory, it lacks realism: how she obtained the gun is never explained, and no blood accompanies the gunshot.

One possible reading is that Harue has already died by the time of the earlier scene at her apartment, where she smiles and reaches into empty air, and that the later scene at the factory shows a ghostly Harue repeating and re-enacting her own death.

From Horror to Science Fiction: The Transformation of Genre

One of the film’s notable features is its transformation from a ghost story rooted in horror into an apocalyptic work of science fiction.

In its first half, the film proceeds along the conventional lines of J-horror: characters are frightened by unsettling footage on monitors, and people meet mysterious deaths or vanish. In the second half, however, the focus shifts away from the individual uncanny encounters of its characters and toward apocalyptic imagery suggesting the extinction of humanity itself — an emptied Tokyo, a crashing airplane, a burning cityscape.

The film offers no clear causal link between the explanation of ghosts overflowing from the spirit world and the phenomenon of people vanishing into black stains. This gap has sometimes been criticized as a structural flaw undermining the coherence of the plot, but it can equally be understood as a deliberate directorial strategy that refuses causal explanation altogether, or as an expression of “an incomprehensible catastrophe.”

Release

The film was released in Japan on February 10, 2001. That same year, it was selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.

Awards

2001 (54th) Cannes Film Festival — FIPRESCI Prize (International Federation of Film Critics)

Remake

An English-language American remake, “Pulse,” was released in 2006. It was directed by Jim Sonzero, with a screenplay by Wes Craven and Ray Wright, and starred Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, and Christina Milian. It was distributed by Dimension Films.

The American remake was subsequently followed by two further installments, “Pulse 2” and “Pulse 3.”

Novel

An original novel titled “Kairo,” written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa himself, was published in hardcover by Tokuma Shoten on January 31, 2001, shortly before the film’s theatrical release, with a paperback edition following in 2003.

While the novel shares its basic motifs with the film, its setting and plot differ from those of the film. Rather than a novelization based on the screenplay, it is an original science fiction novel depicting an invasion by ghosts.

Opera

In 2009, the French avant-garde music group Art Zoyd created a spoken opera titled “Kairo” (also known as “Le Réseau”), based on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s novel “Kairo,” which premiered in Enghien-les-Bains, France. The group’s founder, Gérard Hourbette, served as music and artistic director.

Akiko Kitamura, the contemporary dancer who played the ghost in the film, also choreographed and performed the role of the ghost in this opera. The opera was also covered in the film magazine “Cahiers du Cinéma.”

Home Media

In Japan, the DVD was released by Pioneer LDC on August 24, 2001.

In English-speaking markets, the film was released on DVD by Magnolia Home Entertainment in North America on February 21, 2006. A dual-format Blu-ray/DVD edition was subsequently released by Arrow Video in North America and the United Kingdom in 2017.

Reception

At the time of its release, the film was regarded, alongside “Cure,” as having raised Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s international profile.

Western critics have praised the film as a work of considerable intellectual depth within the J-horror lineage, one that uses the internet — then a new medium — to depict the paradox of technology’s spread deepening human isolation.

At the same time, its narrative’s lack of causal explanation, and its overall reliance on atmosphere, have also been cited as points of divided opinion.

Search Links

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Synopsis (Spoilers)

The film opens aboard a large ship sailing the open sea, carrying survivors including Michi.

(Michi, in voiceover): “One day, it began, quite casually, like this.”

At the houseplant retailer “Sunny Plant Sales,” preparations are underway for a sale, and an employee named Taguchi has failed to show up for work. Michi Kudo visits Taguchi’s apartment complex, finds a key, and lets herself in. She discovers that Taguchi has hanged himself. A floppy disk he left behind contains photo data of his room.

A few days later, Yabe, one of Michi’s coworkers, notices that in the photo, Taguchi’s monitor shows the same image nested within itself, while an adjacent monitor displays an unsettling face.

At home, while Michi does housework with the television on, the broadcast suddenly distorts: the audio pitch drops, and the upper half of the newscaster’s face disappears from the screen.

When Ryosuke Kawashima, a university student, tries to connect to the internet at home, his computer connects on its own to a mysterious site that asks, “Would you like to meet a ghost?” The monitor displays an unsettling video of a figure in a dark room, its walls covered with the mirror-written words “help me” repeated over and over.

Suspicious, Kawashima approaches a science and engineering student who seems knowledgeable about the internet. Harue Karasawa advises him that the next time he connects to the site, he should either save the address (by bookmarking it) or capture the screen (by pressing Print Screen).

Michi’s mother visits her at home and tells her to get in touch with her divorced father.

Yabe receives a call on his cellphone with the message “help me,” and the screen shows an image of a woman standing with her back turned inside Taguchi’s room.

Yabe visits Taguchi’s apartment and finds a piece of paper reading “How to Make a Forbidden Room.”

Within the same apartment complex is a room sealed off with red tape. Yabe peels away the tape and enters, where he sees a female ghost approaching him with strange movements. He screams and, for a time afterward, stops coming to work.

Near her home, Michi witnesses a woman pasting red tape across a door.

The mysterious site connects again to Kawashima’s computer at home. He presses Print Screen, then, unnerved by the eerie video that appears, hastily unplugs the connection cable.

Kawashima reports the incident to Harue at the university, where she is assisting her graduate-student senior, Yoshizaki, with his research. On his computer monitor, numerous glowing white dots move against a black background. Harue explains that it is a simulation studying the conditions for human survival: the dots are programmed so that if two points come too close together they die, while if they drift too far apart they are drawn back toward one another.

Harue visits Kawashima’s apartment to collect data related to the mysterious site. She tells him, “People aren’t really connected. Each of us lives entirely alone.”

Michi grows worried about Yabe’s increasingly strange behavior, but the company president tells her that noninterference in others’ affairs is also a form of courage.

Yabe warns Michi never to enter the room sealed with red tape.

Near her home, Michi witnesses a woman’s suicide by jumping.

At the university library, Kawashima runs into Harue, who is researching literature on ghosts.

Harue shows Kawashima that ghost-like points have begun appearing in the white-dot simulation, and tells him she suspects this anomaly is connected to the mysterious site.

Kawashima chases a black silhouette that appears in the library but cannot catch up to it. Yoshizaki tells Kawashima his hypothesis: that the spirit world’s capacity to hold souls is finite, and that ghosts exceeding this critical threshold are now encroaching on the world of the living. “The circuit has opened,” he says. Yoshizaki suggests that the disturbance began when a forbidden room, created almost by accident, became a kind of device.

(At this point, a scene is inserted showing a construction worker sealing a door with red tape at a work site.)

Michi’s company president goes missing.

Michi’s coworker Junko enters the room sealed with red tape, sees a female ghost, and loses her sanity. Michi leads her out and brings her home to look after her.

Michi goes to a nearby convenience store, but finds it completely empty.

Kawashima tries calling Harue, but cannot reach her. Worried, he visits her apartment, where he finds her soaked from the pouring rain and in a state of panic, murmuring, “Everyone’s gone somewhere,” and “I have to get away somewhere.”

At her apartment, Harue talks with Kawashima. “What if you’re still alone even after you die?” she asks him, gripped by a fear of loneliness. She tells him that ghosts try to keep people alive forever by trapping them in loneliness.

When Michi returns home, Junko turns into a black stain on the wall, which breaks apart into black fragments and scatters in the wind.

Michi tries calling her mother, but there is no answer. She sets out to find her.

That night, Kawashima sees a female silhouette in an empty amusement arcade and flees.

Kawashima goes to Harue’s apartment. Frightened, she asks him to take her somewhere.

Kawashima and Harue board a train at a deserted station.

The train stops, and Harue leaves Kawashima to return home alone.

At Harue’s apartment, her computer connects to the mysterious site, and the monitor shows a man with a black plastic bag over his head shooting himself with a handgun; at the same time, the printer prints out a page reading “How to Make a Forbidden Room.”

A webcam captures Harue saying, “I’m not alone,” smiling as she reaches into the empty air as if embracing someone.

In the street, a television broadcasts information about countless numbers of the dead: an announcer reads out an endless list of names, addresses, and ages, while photographs of the deceased, taken while they were alive, appear on screen.

Kawashima encounters Michi, who is sitting in her car on the street. Michi has been unable to confirm whether her parents are alive and has nowhere left to go. Kawashima tells her about his missing friend, Harue.

Michi suggests to Kawashima that they go looking for Harue.

Kawashima and Michi find Harue at an abandoned factory near her apartment. She pulls off a black plastic bag that had been covering her head, presses the muzzle of a handgun against her jaw, fires, and collapses.

Inside the factory, Kawashima wanders into a forbidden room and confronts a male ghost. A black silhouette with only its face rendered in white slowly approaches him, murmuring, “Long… death was eternal loneliness…” “Help me…” “Long… eternal… loneliness…”

Believing the ghost to be an illusion, Kawashima tries to grab it to make it disappear, but is startled to find, upon touching it, that it is tangible. The ghost tells him, “I am not an illusion.”

Michi drives Kawashima through the deserted city, past car accidents and fires burning in the streets.

The car reaches the coast. Sensing that Kawashima is fated to vanish, Michi weeps. After confirming Kawashima’s resolve to “go as far as we can,” she puts him in a motorboat and heads out to sea. An airplane crashes into the coastal town behind them.

(Michi, in voiceover): “Death comes to everyone eventually. If that’s so, perhaps it would have been happier to simply return to everyone else. But we kept going. Onward, and onward.”

Michi is aboard a large ship that is sailing the sea in search of survivors. The captain tells her that a signal, apparently from survivors, is coming from the direction of South America, and that they will head that way.

Aboard the ship, Kawashima vanishes, leaving a black stain on the wall.

(Michi, in voiceover): “Right now, I am with my last friend. I was happy.”

Notes

Erik Davis, TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, Harmony Books, 1998. ↩︎
Scott Tobias, The New Cult Canon: Pulse, The A.V. Club, 2008. ↩︎

The New Cult Canon: Pulse