PULSE
August 17th 2006
Last week, i saw Pulse, but forgot to tell any of you not to go see it. Hey, wow, it has a 3.6/10 at imdb. i think that's about where i would rank it, yes. If you have seen any of the trailers, you have seen all of the best parts, but i say "best" in comparison to the rest of the film, which basically just fills in the gaps between the scenes in the trailers without really adding to anything besides the runtime-- a scant 90 minutes that seemed almost twice as long.
Pulse's biggest problems are in the acting and inconsistencies departments. Also the editing is crap. (spoilers now)
The nutshell version of the movie is:
Ghosts come out of the internet (and dryers) to destroy humanity so they can live in a desolate gray bleak flaming city with no television or cars or anything that actually separates the living from the dead, and also people who died by having ghosts scream at them are there, too, as ghosts, so no one is sure why this movie even exists.
And if you want to know more than that:
The movie follows Veronica Mars around, who's a smart college chick and keen on psychology. She hangs out with her friends and doesn't return her mom's phone calls. in return, her boyfriend doesn't return her phone calls. After getting a "weird" message from him on her answering machine, she goes to his apartment and he kills himself with a usb cable or something. A few days later, Veronica and her friends get instant messages from the dead guy that say "Help Me." The previews tell you that they got emails, but they didn't.
So, they assume that dead guy's computer has a virus and sends out messages, and they send their other computer-cool guy in to shut the computer down, but he finds that it's not in the now vacant apartment, and also a ghost attacks him. The ghosts in Pulse like to walk up to you real slow and then scream in your face until you don't feel like living anymore. A few more days pass, and the now trio of friends are like "oh, yeah, what happened to our computer-savvy guy?" Veronica calls him and he acts weird on the phone and hangs up.
Afterwards, Veronica finds out that her dead boyfriend's computer was sold by the landlord to a guy that reminds me of Jared Leto, i guess. She tells him he's a dick for sending out the "help me" messages, and Jared-guy is like "ok, but the computer's in my trunk," and Veronica's like "oh, ok bye." Curious, Jared Leto, actually one of the few characters who's names i remember (Dexter), hooks the computer up and finds a website hosted by ghosts. It's like ghost webcams, with various ghosts just staring at the camera and twitching or doing something boring over and over again. Luckily, it's a free site, because it sucks, but Dexter watches it for a really long time, anyway.
Somewhere in all of this, Veronica also gets some mail from dead guy (sent before he hanged himself): 3 rolls of red tape. Red tape stops ghosts from coming in. You have to put it on your windows and peep holes and key holes and cracks and mouse holes and electrical outlets... pretty much everything a ghost might climb through.
Also, Veronica's other guy friend finally goes to look for the guy who went to dead guy's place (the computer-savvy guy, remember? he's been missing for, like, a week at this point) after seeing him on the ghost website, and he gets to the guy's place just in time to see him get pulled into a wall. So... the computer-savvy man was showing up on the website BEFORE he got sucked into the drywall... ?
i'm getting bored all over again just remembering this... Veronica starts hanging out with Dexter, and they decide that ghosts are getting ready to leave the internet and take over the world. There's a scene in a diner where a crazy guy at the bar overhears them and then jumps in to explain the whole movie's premise, just in case you didn't get it. And then to lighten the heavy-handedness of his explanation, a goth girl at the end of the bar bes snarky at the guy, and then probably goes home to post about it on her livejournal.
Meanwhile, Veronica's sassy black roommate (ok, it seems like a trend with Wes Craven) goes downstairs to do laundry because everyone in the city is disappearing and she's bored. Then ghosts come out of the dryer (which is... connected to the internet?) and scream at her.
A couple of hours later, she explodes into black ash while Veronica is sad because her friend just exploded into black ash. Also, this is the first person to explode AND she did so after only a couple of hours, whereas everyone else in the movie dies a couple of days later. Fed up with ghosts, she pairs up with Dexter to bring the ghosts down for good, because Dexter found a computer virus that will kill the ghosts, or as Memento started calling them, "DIGITAL ZOMBIES," because, yeah, they basically are. Armed with the virus, Dexter and Veronica head out to find the scientist who made the digital zombies. He's completely mad, and also a really bad actor.
After finding out where the computer is that they need to upload the virus to, Dexter and Veronica tear across town, which is basically gray and dead now, and nearly everyone is gone because the ghosts screamed in all their faces. But there are a few survivors, who explain that ghosts will come out of internets, cell phones, and wifi, so you need to go someplace without all of that if you want to not get screamed at by a ghost.
Blah blah blah, they upload the virus, and Veronica winds up in the Matrix for a few minutes, if the Matrix was made out of ghost hands, but Dexter brings her back because if you don't look at the digital zombie when he's screaming at you, his screams won't make you want to die (this technique might also work for the movie itself). Then they upload the virus, which should wreck the computer, but instead the computer reboots and the virus has no effect, so all the digital zombies come back and our heroes decide to get away from the city.
They end up parking near some towers (good idea), and Veronica kept her cell phone (good idea) and they get attacked by one more digital zombie while trying to sleep. Dexter steps on the gas, and the digital zombie is wiped out as they escape the cell phone signal. Now, they have to live in human settlements built by the military because ghosts have taken over the world, and made all of the cities gray and on fire. also, her dead boyfriend lives in the city as a digital zombie now, and the whole thing turns out to be a commentary on how digital stuff will make humanity be defeated by ghosts from the internet.
there, now you don't have to see Pulse, i saved you 7 dollars.