Monster Scholar

Cultural mores and traditions that inform the themes of films like Kairo or Ju-On are often re-contextualized for a Western audience in their remakes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though some critics would argue it results in a simplification of often complex films. Ju-On for instance becomes a haunted house story, losing the non-linear narrative utilized by Shimizu as it adapts to a more Western understanding of haunted spaces. The same is true of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo, known stateside as “Pulse,” but whose title resonates more with the word “Circuit” Whereas Kairo is more about the fear of loneliness and an inability to connect, its remake is more about a threatening Other that seeks our destruction though the gateway of technology. Pulse is an very psychological film, a departure from the distance Kurosawa keeps us from the disconnected characters of Kairo. Mattie, our main protagonist is psych major who has several sessions with her professor-cum-therapist who tells he...

In most horror films, the source of fear is usually something external seeking to harm and or kill the protagonists we identify with at the center of the action. Think about the chestburster from Aliens, Michael’s homicidal rampage or any zombie movie you’ve ever seen and you get the idea. But the dynamic at work in these horror films is not the same software running beneath Kurosawa’s bleak thriller, Pulse. Instead of the fear of being attacked or annihilated, the fear that drives Pulse is the simple terror of being alone. The film opens on Michi Kudo, a young woman who works for a plant sales company with her friends Sasano Junko, Toshio Yabe and Taguchi. Michi goes to check on Taguchi at home as he works on a disk of compiled sales data. When Michi arrives all seems well but in the middle of their conversation, Taguchi retreats to a side room and hangs himself abruptly. Junko, Yabe and Michi are baffled by their friend’s sudden suicide and turn to the disk for answers. What they fi...