In a cautionary tale to podcasters everywhere, the hosts of Don't Encourage Us survive just long enough to review the depressing 2001 Japanese horror film Pulse, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, along with the 2006 American PG-13 remake, and the two direct-to-DVD sequels. They discuss the differences among the films, including the changes in tone, message, and target audience, and then make unhelpful recommendations as to who should watch these movies, all while our hosts gradually fade into ash. Enjoy!
In a cautionary tale to podcasters everywhere, the hosts of Don't Encourage Us survive just long enough to review the depressing 2001 Japanese horror film Pulse, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, along with the 2006 American PG-13 remake, and the two direct-to-DVD sequels. They discuss the differences among the films, including the changes in tone, message, and target audience, and then make unhelpful recommendations as to who should watch these movies, all while our hosts gradually fade into ash. Enjoy!
Pulse (2001) is available on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/pulse-kairo-kiyoshi-kurosawa-2001-eng-sub-1301306804834
Pulse (2006) is available on Tubi here: https://tubitv.com/movies/620878/pulse
--------WARNING: Themes of Suicide Discussed-------
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Discourage us on Instagram @DontEncourageUs
Steve: And that she'd been thinking about death since she was a little
Jason: girl and fantasized that death would be the end of loneliness. That part was interesting. Anyone whose life is going too well and they're uncomfortable with the success they need to come back down to earth. Yeah, I think this movie's perfect for that.
They really don't seem super plugged into what's going on around them. Or in front of them? No, frankly, no. No, not at all. They don't seem to be taken out like the opposite. Yeah.
All right. Welcome to the podcast where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, TV shows, movies, video games, nothing's off limits. So that was my original intro. Any
thoughts?
Steve: I like it. Have any, anything negative to say about it? I think it's concise to the point, and then if you had a little music underneath it, I think it
Jason: would work.
So you're gonna like hum or sing While I'm doing that, should we do another tape? He's loving it. Great. Okay, so you'll do a little, uh, nose music for us and mm-hmm. I'll just do the words. I'll grab my kazoo
Steve: and get
Jason: at it. So the movie we watched is 2000 Ones Pulse, Japanese film, part of a trend of techno Japanese horror films that were big at the time.
Uh, like The Ring Jujuan, is that one? Yeah, I
Steve: think Jujuan is
Jason: the Ring, right? Oh, is that okay? I think that makes sense. Or Ringo is the Ring. I'm sorry. Ringo is the ring. Yeah, you're right. So Ringo and the Ring. Both good examples. A Juwan might be one of the spirit ones where it's less about technology and more just about like a curse spirit or a haunting spirit.
Mm-hmm. I don't really remember, but anyway, it was a big trend at the time. A lot of good reasons for why this, uh, resonated, especially with the Japanese. We can talk about that later. Any first impressions? What were your thoughts? It was a movie that I thought
Steve: was really of its time. Like he just said, you know, during that early two thousands era, just this idea that there's a whole dial up sound is something that kind of is so familiar to everybody mm-hmm.
Who's watching it and it's so foreign to us now. There were so many pieces of that movie like that I found the movie really, really dated. The concept itself and how things kind of were put together, figured out by the, uh, protagonist in the movie just didn't seem to make much sense to me. People just knew things like about ghosts and how they operate and why they might be showing up now.
And it was just a given. Okay, this guy knows this, but there was never any real background as to why. So that was one thing. That's a good thing. Another thing was the soundtrack or lack of
Jason: a soundtrack. Oh yeah, absolutely. I found the soundtrack very distracting, very, all those noises that were so intense and seemed like they were coming from some other source, you know what I mean?
It's almost like they were inserted at different times using different audio equipment, uhhuh. It really was distracting. And a lot of them were almost like borderline cliche, like cartoon noises. Yeah. You know, it's like if uh, Scooby and the gang were in a haunted mansion and some of it was, yeah, it was very on the nose too.
It was almost the equivalent to like, You know, somebody falls over and it's like boring. Mm-hmm. It's like, what sound would a ghost make? And that's, they hit that button on the preset Casio setting. You know what I mean? Mean? Yeah. Like there, there's a key for that. I thought that was probably the weakest part of the film.
Steve: Yeah. The fact that the quote unquote music would rise in very odd moments too. Mm-hmm. So there wasn't like a climax or the, I guess the crescendo of a track wouldn't be at the right time. It was almost mistimed like, there were randomly placed musical segments that were supposed to elicit some type of mood from the viewer or some type of reaction, but didn't fit the action that was happening.
I remember there was the scene in the train, when I forget his name, he runs off the train to find the car. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was really weird the way the music started rising and I thought something was gonna happen and nothing happens. He just steps up on a pillar or something and he is looking for, and then it just kind of stops abruptly.
So yeah, there was a lot of that. The music was really distracting.
Jason: There was, it was hard to tell if a lot of those kind of moments were the style of the film. I mean, he's really the creator. He is not just the director. Right. If he was trying to really play off of expectations, and maybe the soundtrack was part of that, but there were a lot of scenes where it seemed like either somebody came in and said, this movie's like an hour or too long, and the audience can figure out how he got from here to here, or you don't need mm-hmm.
An extra two minutes of him looking around in an empty train park. You know what I mean? Like, and they just did sort of jump cuts. Yeah. I couldn't tell if that was what happened, like looking at it after, they were like, well, we filmed a lot, so let's pair it down to the bare minimum that someone can follow.
Or if this was intentional or it's, well, normally in a film, you know, when we play this music and we set things up like this, it would go somewhere. But let's mess around with the audience and have it not really go anywhere. Yeah, yeah, there was a
Steve: lot of that. There was, and the editing I thought was problematic, wasn't very good, and I thought that
Jason: was a little choppy at times.
Yeah. And I thought
Steve: the camera work wasn't very good either. The composition of the shots weren't like a traditional com composition of a shot that you'd see in a movie, but not in a good way. Almost like,
Jason: and it wasn't a, it wasn't a found footage version either to kind of suck you in and give you the impression you're observing.
Yeah. So the shots aren't framed perfectly because you're watching kind of a thing. They didn't do that either. No. I
Steve: noticed the camera would kind of be tilted at moments, but it wasn't a, a scene where someone was supposed to be observing somebody else or stalking them or something. Mm-hmm. It was just the way they set up the camera.
It almost felt like a student film, like the people making the movie weren't really experienced in making a movie in general. Yeah. Yeah. So they were kind of just taping things together, like you said, and then cutting up the movie in a way that's like, it felt like a bunch of jump cuts and really unnecessary scenes.
Like, I really didn't even understand the whole idea of this greenhouse. And how that connected to this computer science lab.
Jason: Yeah. I actually think this might be a style in Japanese film. Right. I watched one Cut of the Dead and That's great. It's one of the best movies I've watched in years and they played off of this, the first 30 minutes of the film really kind of used a lot of these elements, a lot of these visual elements that you're talking about.
I think it maybe is this director's style or maybe a J horror style. And, and keep in mind too, their movie industry isn't blighted with Polish, so to speak, as much as ours is Uhhuh. So there's a little bit more room for people to come in who don't have the same technical requirements. To make something that's more raw and evocative of emotion, and maybe this was intentional in a lot of ways.
It looked to me like they put a really heavy filter on the lens for this, because when I started watching it, I was like, was this made in 2001 or 1981? If someone told me it was like 1977, I would say, yeah, that looks right for a low budget film in 1977.
Steve: Do you think the degradation of the film might have had something to do with it?
Like they didn't take care of like the actual film reels? I was thinking that too. Or was it just a, a filter that they put on when they edited it? It was weird. It seems so
Jason: dated. If they shot it on like actual film and then left the film outside, maybe it felt like that it had that, but this was a like a Sundance pick.
I can't imagine that somebody went, you know, we'll just set these out here behind the shack. It's been 20 years, right? It's not been 40 years and it wasn't cheap material. I'm sure that they shot it. Maybe it was, I don't know. This director had been doing films for a while, for many decades. Maybe he was sticking to old materials and they just didn't take care of it.
I don't know. Or they didn't color
Steve: corrected or something, or
Jason: they just left it washed out. Who knows? It seemed intentional. It really seemed like part of the depressive motif, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're
Steve: saying. That's probably what it was, cuz that would make sense. It's a pretty depressing theme.
So what did you think of the overall, just the plot of the movie or the theme.
Jason: So before we go any further, we should give a brief summary of the plot. So what do you think the plot was?
Steve: I guess there's two parts of the story. There's a group of people that work at a plant store and they start committing suicide.
Because they find like a floppy or a a CD ROM that connects to the internet, but that CD ROM is connecting to the ghost world and people start committing suicide one by one, and they're trying to figure out what's actually happening. And then the other part is a guy who's a student, he goes to a computer science lab and he's trying to figure out exactly what's going on with why he's seeing dead people in the computer.
Jason: Very weird. Okay, so then the two separate main characters, after losing people close to them, ultimately in up together. And for the last 20 minutes or so, 30 minutes of the film, they are surviving an apocalyptic level event of invasion. Ghost invasion from the internet. From the internet is, well, you know, it's a cheap internet provider.
This is what at at t and uh, Comcast, uh, all these companies been trying to warn us about. They're keeping the ghosts out and that's why it costs so much. It's actually very inexpensive to deliver high speed internet. It's ghost security where a lot of the money goes. It's
Steve: so weird, like the second part of it that the guy didn't seem, maybe it was a commentary on that guy.
I forget his name, but the guy with the kind of frosted tips. But see that's the thing with the plot, it's something that, like, I took a look at a summary of the movie afterwards, just kind of to see if what I was thinking was actually the plot. And I kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of like this idea that the ghosts were like coming through the internet and invading the human world.
The thing I didn't really understand though was this whole idea of loneliness. Were they trying to kill the humans so they would become ghosts? Or were they influencing the humans so they'd become depressed? Or was it depressed humans who were then moving into like the spirit realm? That's the part I wasn't really getting.
Cuz they seemed fine
Jason: before, right? The, yeah, there was a lot that I think was left to the, uh, inference. There was a lot that was implied. You were supposed to infer a lot. So I think really one of the key elements of the message in the film was that computer program that somebody created that was in the computer lab.
Uh, what's his name? Rayo Suki, the economics guy who goes to the computer lab to get help. So when he is there, he's told that the computer screen with dots that seem to be moving randomly is a program that was written by one of the graduate students and only the graduate student understands it. But basically the rules are this, the dots, whenever two of them get close to each other, one of them is destroyed.
But if they get far apart from each other, they're pulled back together. And that's essentially what happens in the rest of the film. The characters tend to break off into pairs. They're, you know, initially they're groups and people are sort of free flowing, but then very quickly one individual pulls in another individual and one of them is destroyed and then the survivor pulls in another person and one of them is destroyed.
So I don't think this was a commentary on depression or just depression. I think it was also like a commentary on the pointlessness or the existential meaninglessness or, or danger of relationships. So not only are humans alone, but attempts to change that result in the destruction of one of them.
Steve: Oh, yes.
Because there was that also that part where the one girl who was a computer science student was talking about how we're all essentially lonely. Mm-hmm. Something along those lines. Right. That's right. And that she'd been thinking about death since she was a
Jason: little girl and fantasized that death would be the end of loneliness.
That part was
Steve: interesting, but then she realizes that it's not right, that you just are always alone.
Jason: Well, you know, there are a couple characters who throw out theories and there's no reason to think that theories are correct, but the idea was essentially, I mean this is, what is this? I don't even know where this quote is from.
Maybe you'll recognize it, but when hell is full, the dead will walk the earth. Do you recognize that?
Steve: Yeah. That's from, uh, night of Looming Dead, I think the original. Is that right? I think so. I think they used that in the trailer. I just remember that and thought, wow, that's a great explanation for what's going on in that movie.
Yeah.
Jason: Yeah. Well that, that's essentially the theory of one of the characters is that the dimension that contains what's left of humans when they die is now full after rids of thousands of years of people dying. And so they have found a way. Or somehow the, you know, barrier between dimensions has been broken down and so now they are entering the human world.
But what the computer science person adds is, and, and it's an interesting point that. If they kill people, which they seem to be doing, then all they're doing is sort of propagating problem, filling the problem up, right? Like they're not really solving the problem. Now, you could say, now that they have access to the dimension of the living, it doesn't matter.
But the ghosts do have mass and they can be solid like they do exist as real things with. You know, actual dimensions, because we saw that with the, one of the main characters when he is in the room with that male ghost and he grabs his shoulders. Right. And he actually grabs them. Yeah. So they have mass, maybe she was right in her theory that it doesn't make sense for the ghosts to kill people unless they figure out how to trap humans in their own loneliness so that they do not take up space anymore.
They basically lose their, their mass or their existence, their presence, like they cease to be instead of dying and creating a spirit that at least in this world has mass, or maybe also in the other one. So it's an interesting idea. What I, I didn't understand with her was she embraced the ghost or the webcam that was following her.
Yeah. And she said something along the lines of she wouldn't be alone now. Yeah. But why would she think that?
Steve: I don't know. But the main character or the lone survivor at the end. Ends up saying something similar, but if she said something about like, I'm now with my best friend. He had already died presumably, and was that stain on the
Jason: wall?
Well, and she, she seemed to be able to see him, or maybe we could, and she couldn't, but she knew he was there.
Steve: Seemed like it. I didn't know whether we were
Jason: seeing the same thing She was, yeah. So very odd. Two I thought was the final conversation of meaning. Right. I think she does voiceover, but prior to that, the conversation she has with a ship captain and they were actually debating whether or not it makes sense to try to live.
Because in a, in a world where loneliness is basically a disease or impossible to cure, and if you get close to another human in an effort to cure your loneliness, one of you will be destroyed. Then if that's the world, it doesn't make sense to live. Does it make sense to continue trying to live? Mm-hmm.
That is dark. It is. That is extremely dark and disturbing. It's very, it's very
Steve: disturbing. And the end was very disturbing. Right. She's just sitting there and the other night, I guess, committed suicide.
Jason: Well, and I think that was just punctuating that whole question, like the creator or the director was trying to leave you with the question of whether or not it makes sense to try to live.
Mm-hmm. And that is really, really heavy and disturbing. Mm-hmm. Um, and again, I guess it fits the culture at the time to some extent. But anyway, I, uh, I would hesitate to recommend this film.
Steve: Yeah. I don't think I would. It's extremely morbid, but at the same time, I didn't think it was a great film. I didn't feel very connected to any of the characters.
Did you? I
Jason: was interested in a couple of them. The, uh, economics student, I found him somewhat interesting at times as a character because he seemed to have kind of a plucky luck and an optimism in the face of really, really, obviously terrible things. Like, it just, it seemed like he had this layer of defense that the other characters didn't have, and it really made him stand out, which is partly why the end was so hard.
You know, it, it hit me particularly hard because watching him fall apart, I thought, well, maybe he'll survive. And especially when he was in the room with the ghost, I thought maybe he'll be the one who figures out what to do about this. But that is not this film at all. They sort of raised up a character as I encourage you to attach hope to that character just so that they could take him out at the end.
Yeah, to really underscore the point. And forced the question of whether or not it makes sense to even try. Yeah. So I thought that was bad. It's good in the sense that this film is art. I did not find it entertaining, but it's definitely art. I think in the sense that art evokes a reaction. It triggers emotions and thoughts.
Definitely not entertaining, but you know, definitely, uh, has artistic merit. I would say, in my opinion, the theme is
Steve: very, very dark. But if you look at it that way, if it's, you know, a movie about loneliness and what that means, and survival of the species, I guess kinda like what meaning we have as humans and Yeah, like it's, it's
Jason: interesting in that way.
Yeah. I mean, I think it, if it's meant to evoke reactions, concerns, questions, have you feel something, then I think it's successful. But then why
Steve: Latin America? Like wouldn't this just be happening all over the world? Or was it just confined to Japan? That's what it, they made it seem like, oh, we can escape going there.
Why is
Jason: it cause of, I think there was a, there was a line dropped about, there are signals there, but they're getting weaker. Oh. And the cargo ship that, or the, uh, cargo plane that went down. I think that was the US one. So I think an interesting aspect of this film, um, I originally watched the 2006 remake with Kristen Bell.
Oh, you did? And that has it as well. And the interesting element is that it's kind of a surprise apocalypse. So I think in, in this film, it starts in that particular region. Was it Tokyo? And it, it gradually expands from there, but we're not given any reason why it would start there. So we don't, and we don't know definitively that that's the case.
So it might've started in a lot of places and maybe it's spread at a fairly consistent pace or not, I don't know. But the impression I got from the conversation with the ship captain is that was the only place where he's still getting signals. And maybe the implication was they don't, didn't have the internet infrastructure or parts of there didn't, and, but they did have the ability to send signals to a ship.
I don't know. This is not a science fiction film. It implies that it will be at times. Mm-hmm. But it's definitively not because they don't bother with science in any real way. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Steve: I see what you're saying. Yeah. They just kind of imply that these things are happening or this is just
Jason: the way it is.
It's just the way it's through a lot of it. Yeah. Right. And it has something to do with computers and the internet and what that is exactly. And how that works. We don't know. And actually that brings up one of my biggest questions because I fixate on these kinds of things in an attempt to understand. Do you remember the, it was sort of a weird mix of like a summary and a flashback.
Where one of the characters was explaining a theory and included this idea of a simple machine that breaks down the barriers and gives the internet ghosts access to our realm. And the visuals that accompanied that were partly, uh, an older guy, not old, but like middle-aged guy, seemingly who, or maybe he was a little bit younger, but he was kind of nerdy.
He was at a construction site or something like that. He was in a room and doing stuff, and then he sealed it with the red tape, and then Yes, they made a point to show that the construction equipment like bashed down the door. Yeah, yeah. At one point. Okay, so what I don't understand and, and I maybe I just need to go watch it again, but it seemed like they were saying, or this character was saying that this man built a very simple device.
In that room, then he must have real, either intentionally or unintentionally realized that whatever he was allowing into Tokyo, I guess let's say, or earth realm, Uhhuh could be trapped by putting red tape around door. The doorframe.
Steve: Yeah, that red tape thing was very odd to me. Did you get that
Jason: throughout the movie?
Again, it's, it struck me as something that the director thought was visually interesting. Compelling and really either didn't bother to explain it because he's one of those directors who thinks that explaining things ruins it or something, you know, or I somehow missed the logic. The sequel provides an explanation for that a couple times.
It's not a good, but they provide one that's semi or quasi scientific. So in this film, I didn't understand what the device was. Again, I might have blinked at the wrong time, but I don't recall even seeing computer equipment in that room. I presumably there was.
Steve: All I remember seeing is that like backhoe hitting the door, destroying it, and those were
Jason: tables prior to that.
Prior to that he was in the room, but it was so clipped and it was, there was a weird effect
Steve: going on, right. That they were putting on, it looked kind of like special effect or Yeah, jump cut
Jason: kind of editing. Yeah, it was like a, he was talking, but they were cutting between other things, so it was kind of hard to piece it together.
In your head it was, you didn't have a lot of time, so I didn't understand that. But it sounded like this man built a device that was described by the character describing it as simple and then he sealed the room and left. And I don't understand that at all.
Steve: Yeah, I don't, I don't get what they're trying to say unless, like you were saying that it was, this device is like the the portal device that let everything in, but they don't really go into it and it's all in dial up, which I thought was really funny.
The whole idea that, that these ghosts are like invading the human realm through dial up is really funny. Do you think there was something in general about technology? And how it makes people lonelier. Yeah,
Jason: that was part of the point. So at the time in Japan, as I understand it, they had a couple major cultural problems that a lot of people had become aware of around the same time.
One of 'em was a phenomenon of people dying alone and their bodies not being discovered for days, weeks, or even months. There were a few highly publicized incidents of somebody who was, you know, dead for three months or six months or something like that, and people just didn't know because there wasn't, they had lost connectivity.
And the other thing was the younger people were becoming increasingly isolated because they were spending more and more time on the computer. And living more of their lives that way. In fact, the book World War Z Yeah. Has a character who represents that. He was so isolated in his internet existence that the zombie apocalypse around him was more of a intellectual puzzle than, uh, you know, an imminent threat until it wasn't.
But anyway, I think this film was attempting to capture that probably growing existential concern in the culture around people becoming increasingly isolated and being harmed. Mm-hmm. By technology. I think in Japan. At the same time, technology was advancing relatively quickly and integrating into society quickly and again, that was scary.
So I think this film was trying to put those pieces together, but it, it went past that, especially with the message about loneliness is a trap that you can't escape. You can either endure it alone and be destroyed, or you can attempt to alleviate it by connecting to someone else and destroy them too again.
Dark, you know? Yeah. Very, very dark. That is heavy. So anyway, I think it represented the culture at the time in those ways and maybe some others. It's not like I'm an expert, but I think that's what he was trying to tap into. I'd
Steve: like to listen to an interview with him. It'd be interesting to hear like what his take was.
Jason: He actually later turned the movie into a novel. Oh really? Yeah. So I don't know if he wanted to explain some things or take it in a different direction or just trying to capitalize on what may be his best
Steve: film. Yeah. There were a lot of things about this that were very odd, how like some would die and there would be like that stain on the wall.
What do you think that was representing? Was that their transition into the ghost realm just stays there for a while,
Jason: or, I think it was supposed to be nothingness. I don't know that they transitioned to another realm. The impression I got is that they ceased to be so the ghosts take the life spirit. Out of each person, and then their body completely breaks down without that.
It's like a force or an energy that keeps people together. And when you take it away, they no longer exist. And it's interesting that, I mean, the movie could have easily been that happening to characters over and over again, but instead it was intentionally, some of them committed suicide, right? Mm-hmm.
And some of them didn't. So, you know, it's kind of hard to understand or to infer what the director was trying to say about that. Like, you either kill yourself on your own terms, or you cease to be in more horrible way. Geez, that, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This movie's, again, hard to recommend.
Yeah,
Steve: very. So the whole idea was that the ghosts were influencing someone to feel that intense loneliness to the point where they would commit suicide. Are they just heightening that? Is it already there? Are they like casting, I couldn't tell whether they were like casting some kind of spell on somebody cuz they were so horrified by seeing a ghost and they went to shock and then they, you know, lost it and then committed suicide or something else was going on.
That's the part they didn't really understand. Suspect like they encountered the ghost and then die or killed
Jason: themselves. You know, I think that was supposed to be representative of what the internet or what computers or technology do to people. I think that was supposed to be the message there. I guess you have
Steve: to really look at it from the perspective of how new the internet was at that point, or how relatively new this is probably made in late 99, I would imagine.
Or in 2000. So
Jason: the internet really? Couple years of post-production for this. Is that pro? Yeah, probably special effects university computer lab at 2:00 AM two to 5:00 AM one night. Yeah. Sorry to get
Steve: those locations, you know. Please shoot an hour here.
Jason: Shoot an hour there. I did like the surprise apocalypse idea.
There's another movie in the Mouth of Madness. Did you ever see that one A long time ago. Yeah. So I think that's a similar idea. Sam Neil, I think. Mm-hmm. That's right. Yeah. So he's investigating a death that has to do with a, a famous horror writer, and there's a surprise apocalypse that develops from that, and it's pretty cool.
I, I actually really like that idea of sneaking up on the audience a little bit. I'm sure the, uh, trailers give it all away, but I saw in the mouth of madness, I think on TV for the first time, and I didn't know where it was going. So I think it's cool and exciting if you don't realize that. Also interesting, this movie has the US remake in 2006 and there are two sequels.
To that remake. That's very
Steve: interesting. I would've never picked, uh, this for a sequel in any language.
Jason: Yeah. I actually watched them, I watched the original, the US remake, and both sequels. That's how dedicated I am to this podcast. Wow. Wow. Lemme tell you, I, I did it so you don't have to because they were good.
Your co-host really
Steve: appreciates it. I'm sure the audience
Jason: does too. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm tempted to take 'em one by one. But to be honest, I think it's more interesting to start with the two sequels. So there are a couple individuals, I guess, directors, writers, producers who were known for taking existing projects and creating direct to streaming or direct to DVD sequels.
And so pulse two and pulse three, I think Pulse two was Pulse two apocalypse maybe, and Pulse three was. Pulse. Pulse two was pulse, two invasion. Anyway, one of 'em is invasion. The one's apocalypse, I think they both came out in the same year. They were generally, or both of them were largely filmed using photos as the background and super imposing actors over photos.
Oh wow. Yeah, so not even green screen, it was just a picture and like, for example, a picture of a field and then the actor was walking. You know how on Zoom when you hide your background uhhuh and you can see that there's a little bit of like space between the person and the back? Yeah. That there's a lot of that.
Like if their arm is a little bit close to their body, you can see what was actually behind them for a second. Oh, wow. Uh, in the gap in the space between the two. So, so that's one thing, and I don't know if that was an intentional choice, but it's a weird one and it, it really, I. Really looks cheap. I mean, I don't know what the budget was, but it must have been extremely low for them to do that for things like a field.
But again, maybe it was intentional. Battlestar Galactica remake Jamie Barber, one of the lead actors in that is the star of the Second Pulse film, the first sequel to the US version. There's a couple other characters here and there, or actors that, you know, somebody else might recognize, but nobody else stood out to me.
Do they add anything interesting to the lore? Not really. There's a couple things that I think the director or the writer didn't really get about the original, at least the remake or the original film. So I think there were a couple times where they sort of broke continuity unintentionally by changing the way the ghosts work.
But, uh, generally it's pretty dumb. There was one guy who just wore all red so he could walk around and the ghost couldn't get him. Yeah, I thought so. Well, they opened the second one with that, or it's pretty early on. He's just wearing all red over his whole body even puts in like red eyedrops and then puts red go goggles over that, that so they can can't see him or something.
Well, they can't him. They can't. Yeah. Ghost blockers. Ghost blockers. It's weird that they made these, I mean, the 2006 film, I think it made like 20, 28,000 or 28 million. I think it, it only ate, made like eight or 9 million more than the budget. It was, um, the 2006 remake was executive produced by Harvey Weinstein.
So, fun fact, that's great. Wes Craven wrote the first draft and then they tossed it and somebody else rewrote it. The guy who direct what, read that draft and
Steve: see what he did. Right. I mean,
Jason: You gotta think it's a little better. So the 2006 one, they definitely tried to do some of the more disturbing elements from the, uh, original.
For example, the ghost walk. You remember that from the 2001 version where the ghost is walking toward in the basement and doing weird kind of jerky movements. And it was mostly the actress performance. And then I think there was a little bit of editing to, to make it look like she's shifting around kind of.
Right. And like jumping Yeah. Glitchy or whatever. Yeah. But I thought that was great. And there's some pretty good tradition of unusual movement like contortion or bizarre use of the body in Japanese horror. And I think it's been stolen and used repeatedly in American horror films now, but, and maybe it didn't even originate there, but I, but I thought that was a really interesting choice.
It was quite bold and they did a version of it in the 2006, but it was heavily. Watered down. And I think that's a good way to describe a lot of this stuff. You remember the bit where the same ghost, uh, in the original is looking over the couch? Yes. They did a version of that again, really just didn't capture the same poorer spirit.
It wasn't as creepy and unnerving as the original. I'm trying to think. There's a bunch of other stuff. Uh oh yeah. The hanging. So again, in the original, the hanging was particularly disturbing and that wasn't a good scene. Yeah. And in the face, and I mean, you could say it was weird and whatever, but it was disturbing no matter how you slice it.
In the the 2006 version, that movie's PG 13.
Steve: PG 13.
Jason: For this movie, yeah. For the remake of this movie. That's shocking. You can imagine the hanging was more implied or alluded to where you see dangling feet. There's not the like horrific face. And that was my first clue that it's not gonna be, Particularly scary, Brad.
This movie, though, is somewhat entertaining. Kristen Bell is good. She's a good actress. She's a very good actress. Yeah, definitely not the problem. In this film, there's a bunch of familiar faces. The, uh, land lady who comes in and has kind of a bit part, she is from, oh, what was that movie about? NASA scientists, like mathematicians.
Oh yes,
Steve: I know exactly who we were talking about. I just can't remember the name. Gosh,
Jason: what was Hidden? Hidden Figures. Hidden Figures. Hidden Figures. She's in that, she's also in, I, I think it's called Thunder Force. Remember that Netflix movie with um, Melissa McCarthy? Yep. I know. Is it, is it Thunder Force?
She's the woman from that. Right. So she's in this. There's a lot of very familiar and a lot of 'em are TV actors, at least at the time. So I think this was an attempt to kind of break in by, you know, the popularity of the Japanese horror remake. So the acting was pretty good. It was okay. Ian Summer Hold is in it, and he's, he's not great, uh, in, in it.
I mean, I'm not gonna speak to his whole career, but he's, uh, supposed to be this like computer science guy, or he's like a rebel computer. He has all these computer parts that he gets and he sets up his station in a dirty, moist, abandoned factory or warehouse. And, you know, he's like kind of an expert hacker and stuff.
The typical hacker set up right. The abandoned, like, he's like a pretty boy moron through most of the film, you know what I mean? Where he is like more brave and stupid than smart, and he doesn't seem to have a lot of technological knowledge except when it's super convenient to the plot. So, uh, I didn't love that.
Oh. And uh, it was nice to see, uh, Kristen Bell was rocking the Motorola Razor. That's, I can remember to see those flip phones. Yeah. The classic Razor. There's some
Steve: good phones in this one. Uhhuh in the 2001, 2006 probably had some classics, right?
Jason: Some, there's some good phones. Some good phones in there. Was it Nokia
Steve: out then?
Uh, that brick, that was probably thousand six,
Jason: right? Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember seeing them. There probably was one in there somewhere. We should also mention that these films are available online. Where did you watch Pulse? 2000. That
Steve: Prime video.
Jason: Amazon Prime Video. Okay. Yep. It is actually available in the internet archive for free.
Really? Yep. Huh. And, uh, if you have Canopy. The app, you might be able to access it through your local public library depending on what they have available. So I just thought I'd mention that in case anybody wants to watch it. And the 2006 version of Pulse was free on tubey, so you can pay for it or you can get it free legally depending on your access to those streaming services.
Platforms. Platforms. There you go. By the way, pulse two was afterlife is what it was called. That's a great title. Absolutely terrible, terrible film. Almost unwatchable,
Steve: I would say. See, I had a hard time watching this film, the original. It was just way too slow for me. I couldn't really connect with any of the characters, put it that way.
Jason: What about the, uh, computer scientist? She was attractive.
Steve: Yeah, I mean, Out of all of 'em. She was the most interesting, I'd say. But the other guy,
Jason: one of the actors in this went on to play the wife of the Murdered show Gun in last Samurai, the one that, uh, Tom Cruise, like I think he takes on as protect to protect her.
Oh really? Whatever. Really? Yeah. Uh, I think it might be the computer scientist woman, but one of them goes on to play that, uh, she actually, this was her breakthrough role, I think. I thought I
Steve: recognized
Jason: the captain on the ship. Yeah. I think he's actually a well-known actor who just did a small part on this
Steve: one.
Yeah, I think he's pretty famous. I've definitely seen him before. I'm not sure where,
Jason: though. Oh, uh, interesting note, again, going back to comparing the 2001 and the 2006, the 2001 movie ends the way we said with, you know, that very, very disturbing discussion of zombie apocalypse type ending. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what, and with the added discussion of whether or not.
You should try to mm-hmm. You know, whether it, it makes sense to try to live, which is just awful. So anyway, the voiceover at the end of the 2006 film, Kristen Bell says the will to live never dies. Yeah. So they, they really wanted to spin this in a different direction. I mean, the, the film itself, they attempt to make it more grounded, more linear, less disturbing, and more of a traditional American film.
So, oh, I think you asked the red tape. Yeah. Okay. Well, actually I should back up. So the scientific quote unquote explanation in the 2006 version for what's happening is a computer scientist at the university in say Pittsburgh or something like that, figured out that in an effort to improve wireless bandwidth or like the transmission of information wirelessly, he and his team discovered that there are additional wavelengths available.
That they didn't know were existed at all or present, and they wrote software that hardware could use to tap into those parts of the band or to add bandwidth using those frequencies, I guess would be the way to say that. But in doing so, there were a bunch of freak, or after they activated it, there were a bunch of freak incidents in the lab and.
A lot of what you can imagine started happening where people were confronted by ghosts and you know, became depressed and then killed themselves and so on. And this guy and his team figured out accidentally that the ghosts cannot get through the red wavelength. They had red utility tape in their computer lab for some reason, and they must have, I don't know, had some up on a wall or whatever and seen that the ghost couldn't get through it, or you can imagine the scene, right?
So he figured that out the. First character. By the way, the 2006 movie opens with your traditional, like, um, if it were a TV show, it'd be a cold open, you know, where some rando gets killed by whatever the monster of the week is on supernatural, you know what I mean? Or X-files or whatever it is exactly how the film opens.
It's like someone you don't know or care about is, seems uncomfortable for reasons you don't understand. They go somewhere that you should think they wouldn't want to go if they're nervous, like somewhere dark and isolated. You see the ghost in the 2006 movie in the first 10 seconds of the film. Oh, wow.
Like, there no history, there's no buildup. There's a ghost. Like you see it like right away. So anyway, in the first like five minutes, this guy is confronted, there's a full screenshot of him getting his soul sucked out of his face by a fully visible ghost. And he's then, after that, he's all depressed and miserable and so on.
So it's got that, uh, typical supernatural opening. That guy you find out later is Kristen Bell's, like crush or whatever. He previously, to this moment had hacked into the science lab files or the computer science lab files, gotten access to their program that allows you to tap into other bandwidths. Yeah.
And he had started, had activated it on his computer, spread it from there, I guess. And so it was working its way around the world. And as soon as he realized what he had done, he contacted the guy who created it, found out about the red tape thing, and he tried to inform Kristen Bell and some other people before he killed himself.
So,
Steve: so it's much more rooted in like a, your typical American plot line. Yeah. As you
Jason: explained, there's kinda like a, yeah, there's like a chase scene, you know what I mean? Like a high speed chase scene at one point it could not be. More, uh, stylistically different than that film. And I guess that's what they wanted.
They wanted something that would appeal to, uh, people who text. That makes sense.
Steve: Sounds like it's a very, very different
Jason: type of movie. It is. It's more entertaining. It's not terrible. It's watchable. It held my attention. I've seen it before and there were a couple times, especially when Ian Summer Hold is, you know, doing a lot where I sort of wandered off and my head kind of drifted to other, my eyes drifted to other things, but it's not a bad film and it's an interesting comparison because the 2001 film is disturbing and evocative.
It's absolutely, in my opinion, not entertaining. Mm-hmm. The remake is entertaining. It's much lighter and it's a little surprising because they kept some of the elements that made the original kind of cool. Right, right. It's not a total waste of time. It's not gonna sink anybody's career except maybe the director.
Yeah. Who directed it. The point is, I looked it up twice and I can't remember. So I will look one more time. Yeah. It looked like he really hadn't done much. Uh, lemme see if I can track it down. Jim Zaro also known for War of the Angels, the video game Kill zone three. He was an actor in the Resident Evil five video game, so not too much.
This was not the breakthrough for him. Yeah. And the director of the original, his last name is Kiowa. Uh, Kira. Kira, no, Keoshi. He's unrelated, but he's actually a celebrated horror director in Japan. He's made a lot of stuff, so he's, um, fairly well respected, I think, or very well respected. No problem. And some of his other films have a following, so I think this might be his best work.
Who would you recommend this movie to? The original 2000, maybe an art
Steve: student, okay. Or someone who's really looking to watch something that's like way more avant-garde and doesn't really need concrete answers for what's happening in the plot. Things are just happening. Someone who likes video art installations at like modern art museums.
Would probably enjoy something like this where you're just seeing like looped footage that doesn't seem to connect with anything. Someone who likes that I'd recommend it to. Mm-hmm. But if you want like a solid plot, you want characters that you can, you know, hook into or relate to. This isn't the movie, but Yeah.
And I think if you wanted someone to know about like a very specific time period like that, early two thousands in Japan, I think this could be a snapshot type of film that you'd watch to see what things were like. Okay. Between the fashion, the technology element, and just what people were thinking around the supernatural in what you were saying about like film in general during that time.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's what I'd recommend it to. It's a very specific type of person. I think
Jason: So. Like a sociologist, I think. Like a sociologist, yeah.
Steve: Or an art student. I think. Either one of those cuz they wouldn't necessarily be asking so many questions, at least the art student around having a plot that you would really wanna dig into.
Like when you compare something like this with like a World War Z or something, which has like a really like action packed, linear type of plot that just expands out. This
Jason: is in it. What about somebody who had taken an uncomfortably large amount of Prozac probably feel like this, this movie might help them level out?
Oh yeah. I think
Steve: that anyone who's feeling very depressed should definitely watch this movie like late at night. I think it's a great, it's a great one. No, no. It's hard for me to recommend this movie. What about
Jason: you? Anyone whose life is going too well and they're uncomfortable with the success they need to come back down to earth?
Yeah, I think this movie's perfect for that. I think like if you won the lottery, you know, and you're jittery from all the excitement, this would be a really good movie to sit and watch.
Steve: Yeah, this would definitely do it. This is definitely gonna bring you
Jason: down. Absolutely. If you're too much in love. It's, you've met someone, but it's too early to have these strong feelings.
This is the perfect movie to, uh, pull the rug out from under that. If you have
Steve: hope, hope in
Jason: anything, but, but too much hope. Too much hope. You know if you're pollyannaish. Yeah. People keep telling you that. You just, it's annoying that you look on the sunny side of life all the time. This would be a good movie for you.
This is it. Really. Pay attention, color glasses. Take them off. That's right. This'll smash 'em right into your eyeballs. Yep. This is game over. How about this? I'd recommend this for any, anyone who is interested in getting into filmmaking. They recently bought expensive equipment. They have been experimenting with shooting some footage.
They're really frustrated and disappointed that the picture is not as clear as they would like, and they're thinking they're never gonna, you know, make something that'll win awards. If they can't get better picture quality, this is the perfect film for them. That's good. And a film
Steve: composer who's also very frustrated, who's
Jason: intimidated, you know?
Yeah. They'll
Steve: ne they'll never get their music into a film. Their son, John, John
Jason: Williams
Steve: Jr. Yep. Yeah. And video editor as well, who's thinking, you know what? My editing is just not up to par. That's it.
Jason: Yeah, that reminds me, I was watching the um, Obi one series on, uh, Disney Plus. How is it? And it, it was okay.
Parts of it were good. I thought, you know, you and McGregor's great. But I watched the first episode and I was kind of disappointed. It, it really was kind of slow and it just didn't hook me. But I was talking to my friend and I was trying to be positive and I was like, I'll tell you what though. The soundtrack was amazing.
I don't know who they got to record that or who they got to write that music, that composer, but it was really good soundtrack. It was, you know, good classic Star Wars stuff. And you know, that guy's got a bright future. My friend was like, you mean John Williams? And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah, they got John Williams to do it.
That's so funny. Okay, well that guy's going place that explains it. You heard it here first. Yep. John. He's going places. I'm telling you, look out
Steve: for that name. Yeah.
Jason: John Williams. Yeah. Write it down. He's gonna make, it's, see if we can get in touch with him for a collab. Yeah. And write our, I think he'll be,
Steve: maybe he'll be the first, uh, podcast interview guest.
Jason: He's just gonna score all of our episodes. Yeah.
Steve: For free. Once he hears his score, I come up with,
Jason: uh, it's gonna start with your humming and then pull to a, or go to a full orchestra. He's like, I
Steve: can't, I just can't. He just gets home,
Jason: gets on his, gets on his computer. Where would you go with this idea? Just the original 2001, if you were gonna expand on this, how would you do that? Would you do a novel, another movie?
Like where would you run with it? My obvious
Steve: choice, I guess, would be some type of series or mini series, just cause of the Walking Dead. Along those lines, but the ways, where would you pick up the story? That's the thing that I'm having trouble with. Would you just pick it up in, you know, where they were going in Latin America and have them living their lives there.
Maybe there the ghost stop invading the human realm for a while, and then a few years later they start again. And then the whole thing becomes like, how do you get them to stop? But the way the plot is set up, it seems that it's set up around technology, like an internet connection is like allowing them to come into the human realm.
So it wouldn't make much sense now. You'd almost have to set it in that exact time period, and maybe a place like Latin America at that time, you could get away with not having such a strong signal or whatever. But I'm having a really difficult time with this one. Usually I can think of like a million ways to take something like this, but I don't know.
There's something that's like so hooked into this like idea that these ghost are coming in through a dial up connection, an internet connection that like, I can't really see it. Maybe a short film, you know about the two remaining characters, but then what is it, right? If the world does operate that way, when these two people are getting together, one of them ends up dying, how do you address that and stop it?
It's like, almost like the plot. It doesn't really allow itself for like a lot of sequels, in my opinion. I haven't seen those sequels. I don't know what those plots are, but like I, it's very hard for me to come up with one.
Jason: Yeah, you don't wanna go that way either. You don't wanna do any of what either of those sequels did for sure.
But I think if it fell into my lap, I think I would tell a tandem story. Like I would follow different characters started around the same time as the 2001 movie and use these other characters' story to fill in more information about what's happening, you know? So I would really pay close attention to the rules established in this film, and then I would shy away from something that was too stylistically different.
So I think I would do a similar a take where there's not a lot of clear information provided. There's just sort of theories and bits and pieces. But I think I would try to fill in some of the gaps by having the characters in another part of the world or another part of the country have a very different experience that explains.
Some things a little bit better. Would
Steve: their experience be trying to figure out how all of this started
Jason: in the first place? No, I don't. I think that, again, violates the spirit of the first film too much. I think it would just be that they're very different people in a different environment and a different culture, and they're experiencing the exact same thing, but because they're different people, you know, the experience diverges without breaking the rules.
Mm-hmm. But it diverges in ways that teach the audience new things. So the characters in the sequel would learn relatively no more. Then the character is in the original, but they would learn different things and then, you know, it would be interesting and informative and rewarding for the audience.
Having seen the first one, you know, you watch the first one and I might smooth out out some of the stylistic choices just to make it a little bit easier to follow. But if you really want to capture that dread, you can't smooth it out as much as they did for the American remake. Right. You know, it's still gotta be disturbing and uncomfortable a lot of the ways and visually unappealing in a lot of ways.
But if you follow different characters and you do the slow build to the larger apocalypse again, or play off that expectation somehow, and then you introduce maybe a better explanation for the red tape or these characters discover some other use of red that's significant or something, right. Like I think that could be rewarding or an interesting and, you know,
Steve: worthwhile would, do you make it be more of a horror movie than this one?
Jason: This one is a horror movie, I guess. What do you mean? Like what horror elements are you asking?
Steve: Maybe more like your typical ghost story where there's more some scares or like the conjuring type of movie. Ah,
Jason: no, I would intentionally stay away from that because this movie was praised for not having those things.
So I would use like disturbing imagery like the suicide, you know, and the face of the man who committed suicide by hanging himself. I would use stuff like that, the disturbing actions, but I would do a lot more like slow build. I would stay away from some of the weird audio stuff. I would probably not do any of that.
What
Steve: about character development? Would you delve deeper into one or two characters, or would you have it. Be many different characters that are kind of like archetypes.
Jason: I think it would be hard to do what he did because that's not how I think about people or characters or film. So I might try to boil my interpretation of what was done to its essence and regarding character and then try to build a minimalist version of something more familiar to me around that.
So I may spend a little more time establishing characters so that the audience can connect to who they are, but I'm gonna stay away from as much of that as, as is traditionally done probably. But to some extent, the story will dictate that. Cause I do think something was lost in this film because as a viewer I wasn't really anchored in the characters as much.
But there is something that's also disturbing about that. But then when they die, less is lost. Yeah. They, they seem less significant. I think I would do something again, try to capture the spirit and do it in a way that's a little bit more traditional probably just to keep audiences engaged. Yeah. Cause
Steve: I thought that was a big flaw with this movie not being able to connect with any of the characters.
Yeah. I really felt
Jason: like I didn't know anyone. We have to keep in mind that I think some of that may have been lost due to cultural differences. Like, uh, maybe a Japanese viewer might have connected more with the characters based on things that were subtle. Mm-hmm. Uh, like, oh, I totally get that kind of person, or something like that, that you, you know, oh, she's wearing that or doing this and so now I understand more about this character.
Whereas you and I are like just standing there waiting for something to happen or sitting there waiting for something. Yeah. That's quite possible for someone to tell us very clearly who this person is. Mm-hmm. But they were visually easy to distinguish, so yeah, that's true for sure. That's a good question.
I would say it's a flaw in the film, except I don't think this is supposed to be entertaining. I think this film is art. I think it's supposed to be evocative and having characters to attach to is contrary to the message. Maybe he wanted the audience members to feel lonely. Isolated and I really highly recommend nobody watch this film alone or when you're having relationship problems or a dry spell or anything like that.
Yeah. Anything. Yeah. Recently lost a family member or your dog ran away, or your cat won't cuddle with you while you watch it. Like all big no-nos, uhhuh, you know? Absolutely.
Steve: That we definitely agree
Jason: on. Yeah. You might even want to watch it in short bursts, although you're gonna get completely lost cause it's too confusing to remember.
I did, uh, get the impression though that this movie leaves you or leaves audience members feeling like something is unresolved, wanting to go back to it and revisit it in their mind and think about it and almost like get it to a place where it feels more comfortable. Analyze it until you feel like you arrive at a place where you can put it away.
But it resists that mad
Steve: respects. Yes. Yeah. I mean it is, like you said, evocative. I'll give it that. Yeah, it's, it's something, it does really elicit a reaction, either good or bad.
Jason: Right? Right. And I think hating this film or disliking this film strongly and wanting to not think about it is a very valid response and not necessarily one that indicates poor quality.
And I maybe even it indicates mental health or you know, that somebody is struggling with typical everyday human struggles. It's an interesting film, you know, again, I wouldn't recommend people watch it cuz it'll give you internet ghosts. Well listen to this podcast. Anything else? Anything else stand out?
Steve: Not really. I think pretty much covered everything I wanted to cover. I had a bunch of notes here, but it looks like we talked
Jason: about everything. If you're interested, go watch it, but you know, hold someone's hand. Someone who loves you profoundly not when you're arguing. Have your dog sit on your lap in front of you during the entire production.
Any other advice? For someone who might wanna watch this film. Keep the lights on. Make sure you have before you go to therapy. Yeah. Not before bed. Not before bed. Not after therapy. Not
Steve: after. No. During the day is probably a good time to watch it. Yeah. Maybe a weekend when you're gonna be distracted by a lot of things before you
Jason: go to bed.
Yeah. But not a day where you have a lot to do. No, no. Not a day where you're, you're gonna encounter obstacles. You know what I mean? Yeah. Not
Steve: hard to, not the day you've read Nietzsche. Yeah,
Jason: exactly. Maybe on the way to church. I don't dunno. Yeah. I don't know. Don't watch it on a small screen cuz you're gonna think that's why you're lost.
That's not why you're lost. By the way. You're gonna think that it's just the way it is.
Steve: Don't blink cuz you'll miss something though. Just kidding. You're not gonna miss much
Jason: if you blink. Oh. But you will though. If you blink, you're gonna miss. You might miss. Like stuff, I'm not gonna say key stuff, but you're gonna miss stuff.
Something a jump on or something sometimes. Yeah. Cuz it's just there for a split second and it's not like you can make sense of the film without it, but again, what kind of sense can you make of the film? So basically if you finish this movie and you are kind of depressed, then you understood the film, you lonely.
That's a fair assessment when you're missing people or you're thinking about the point of life and not really sure what it is. Then I think you nailed it. Yep. I think you got it down. I wouldn't, maybe you're a little bit angry like Steve,
Steve: I'm depressed after
Jason: having seen this movie. Maybe your mind is reeling trying to figure out how to reject this film so it doesn't accidentally sink into the fabric of your life essence.
Steve: No, not at all. Hopefully I didn't buy it and I only rented it. You don't have
Jason: any black, uh, black rod or anything, do you? Not yet. Okay.
Steve: I'm looking.
Jason: Because there's a shot for that I'm sure if you tell your doctor, I'm sure. Um, anything else? Any, anything else to cap this experience? I'm
Steve: glad we're not using dial up anymore
Jason: because of the internet.
Ghosts. Because the
Steve: internet ghost. Exactly. They can't get us now. Yeah. They can't do
Jason: broadband. Thank God for Comcast Extra security. Thank God. Glad I got that speed boost. That's funny. So what did we talk about today? What was this episode about?
Steve: Well, this episode was about the Japanese, you call this a horror film.
Jason: It's considered a horror film. I'd consider it an art film. Yeah. Japanese
Steve: horror
Jason: art film called Pulse. It's an unsettling art film, I think.
Steve: Yes. About ghosts that travel into the human realm via the internet
Jason: for reasons that are unknown, via methods that are not understood or explained. Continue. Else did we talk about,
Steve: we talked about the fact that this movie was more artistic than a horror film.
It's one of the big things. I think it's more of a philosophical type of horror film than any I've ever seen. We talked about the camera work. How was subpar or maybe intentional, we're not sure. And how this movie was really, uh, encapsulated that specific time period of technology in Japan and the idea that people get extremely lonely.
All those incidents that you talked about having happened in Japan with people committing suicide or their bodies not having been found cuz they were just so alone. Maybe this movie's more of a social commentary than anything else. And maybe that's why I was looking at it from a very different angle.
I was trying to see it as a traditional horror movie, but maybe it's, it's really not that. It's just trying to make a statement about society and loneliness. And what
Jason: that means. So yeah, makes sense. We also established that Kristen Bell is definitely not usually the problem, right?
Steve: Not at all. She's a great actress.
Jason: We came up with a pretty good list of recommendations for who should and should not watch this film. That's true. We did
Steve: a very long list, a comprehensive list.
Jason: I feel like it was good representation. I think you can probably, uh, infer from there whether you should watch this film or not. So that was good.
What else did we do? We spared hopefully both of our listeners, uh, is that optimistic? Our listeners, our listener, both our listeners. Ourselves included, perhaps. Is that how we put that? I think so. Uh, we spared 50% of our listeners in that case from watching two really terrible sequels. Yeah, exactly. I think that might be You did bad.
That was, that was your missed accomplishment.
Steve: All credits to you. I, I was very surprised by you having watched those other two. But somebody had to, I guess
Jason: somebody has to, uh, go on the internet and get in and lose their life essence.
Steve: Spend like five hours on the Pulse series.
Jason: Absolutely. What else did we do?
We talked about in the mouth of madness and surprise Apocalypses briefly, which I'm a fan of. I love films that seem like they're one thing and then cleverly you realize they're a much bigger thing. And to be honest, if you think about it, how many horror movies have you seen that shy away? From doing this, and they really should.
Logically, whatever people are dealing with should be a, an apocalypse. Right. It's a big enough deal. Mm-hmm. That it should kill a lot of people or destroy chunks of the planet or society or civilization. But in the movie, they kind of chicken out. They like make it smaller again. Right. You
know
Steve: what I mean?
They isolate the characters. They isolate the plot. It's only happening in one specific place in a house.
Jason: Absolutely. I mean, a lot of times if these supernatural things exist, vampires okay. Mm-hmm. It's contagious. They exist. Why are they not everywhere? Why are they not destroying society? What was that? Um, movie, uh, Rodrigo Dusted.
Dawn Robert is Rodriguez. Thank you. Robert Rodrigo, Dustin Dawn. That is a movie that very easily could have become an apocalypse. And probably should have, right?
Steve: But mean it was all
Jason: just in that bar. Right. But yeah, it just begins and ends kind of, and in that closed space, there are a ton of films where if whatever's killing people existed, it would totally become, or it would, let's say the scale would increase dramatically and exponentially by the actual description of the character.
But they shy away from that and they try to make it smaller. And I think it's fun and interesting when films embrace the true destructive power of whatever it is, the horror element that they created. I think that's pretty cool. That's why World War Z is so good. I think Life Force did that. Yeah. A lot of zombie movies do that.
I guess maybe that's why they're popular. Yeah. In part because they. They're scarier. They don't, yeah. They don't steer away from world ending implications. Mm-hmm. So, yes. So we settled that. What else? What else do we talk about? Anything else we established today or covered or talked about? Oh, where to find movies.
Cheap internet database.
Steve: How soundtracks are very important. You
Jason: should not disregard sound effects or music. Yeah. Don't go. Don't go cheap. Yeah. Not go cheap. Don't think because you can do other things. You can do this. Yeah. You can't get John, whoever you're out there. Yeah.
Steve: The lone listener.
Jason: That's right.
That we might have out there at least go on Fiverr. You know what I mean? Yep. Find someone who has access to better gear. I don't dunno what to tell you some something. Yeah. Do something. Don't make your own
Steve: sound effects.
Jason: That lowered the film. For sure.
Steve: Significantly. Yeah, they should have paid somebody to do like an actual soundtrack and not just get, it almost sounded like stock sounds that you would find for free on the
Jason: internet.
Just like, yeah, it really did. Timeline it absolutely did. It was like they ran out of budget. Money before they got through that. It's like spooky
Steve: ghost sound
Jason: wave file. Mm-hmm. Number three. Yeah. Yeah. It was just like that.
Steve: And for those who watched the movie, he's not exaggerating. It was literally woo.
Jason: Far as we didn't hear the Wilhelm scream. Good. All, I guess that covers it. Anything else? We got it. All right.
Steve: Pulse one through three.
Jason: It's actually one and then one through three. Oh, oh God.
Steve: It's even worse than I
Jason: thought. I know. It's what it takes to suck the life.