Pulse (2001 film)

Pulse
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Produced by	Ken Inoue Seiji Okuda Shun Shimizu Atsuyuki Shimoda Yasuyoshi Tokuma Hiroshi Yamamoto
Written by	Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Starring	Kumiko Aso Haruhiko Kato Koyuki Kurume Arisaka
Music by	Takefumi Haketa
Cinematography	Jun'ichirô Hayashi
Edited by	Jun'ichi Kikuchi
Distributed by	Toho Company
Release date	10 February 2001
Running time	118 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Box office	$51,420

Pulse (回路, Kairo^?) is a 2001 Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. The movie was well-received critically and has a cult following. An American remake, also titled Pulse, debuted in 2006 and spawned two sequels. The script was also adapted into a novel of the same name by Kurosawa himself.

The plot centers on ghosts invading the world of the living via the Internet. It features two parallel story lines.

Kudo Michi (Kumiko Aso), an employee at a plant shop, has recently moved to Tokyo. Her co-workers include Sasano Junko, Toshio Yabe and Taguchi, who has been missing for some days working on a computer disk. Michi goes to visit Taguchi's apartment and finds him distracted and aloof; in the middle of their conversation, he casually makes a noose, leaves, and hangs himself. Michi and her friends inspect the disk he left behind and discover it contains an image of Taguchi staring at his own computer monitor, creating an endless series of images. In the other monitor on his desk, they discover a ghostly face staring out into Taguchi's room.

Yabe receives a mysterious phone call of a distorted voice repeatedly saying, "Help me." Upon checking his phone, Yabe sees the same image found on Taguchi's disk. He goes to Taguchi's apartment and sees a ghostly black stain on the wall where he hanged himself, before finding a crumpled piece of printer paper bearing the words, "The forbidden room." Upon leaving, he notices a door sealed up with red tape and enters, encountering a ghost. Yabe becomes depressed and uncommunicative, and eventually begins hiding in a storage room. He tells Michi that he had seen something horrible in "the forbidden room." On her way home, Michi sees a woman hurriedly sealing a door with red tape. Michi later witnesses the woman jump to her death from a silo at a cement factory.