Pulse

We went to see Pulse yesterday, and it was good.

It's basically your "technology comes back to bite us in the arse" storyline, but from a fresh angle.

On friday, Josh (Jonathan Tucker) killed himself. Two days later, he sends his friends a message.

Yep, that's in the trailer. And it gets wierder from there.

Things - and they can only be described as "things" - are appearing and sucking the life out of people. It seems to be related to something Josh found whilst hacking another computer, and, from there, to some experiments being run with a new communications system.

What sets this apart from similar movies is the global horror. This isn't just one set of kids being terrorised, nor one town, or one city. These things are everywhere. The whole human race is under attack.

The effects are outstanding. The acting's about as good as can be expected.

Okay, so there's the good.

Here's the bad:

The story seems to move in fits and starts. It's almost like somebody made a great 3-hour movie and then let a monkey edit it down to an hour and a half. And there's Dexter (Ian Somerhalder) who just appears in the middle of the movie. The only background we get on him is that he bought Josh's computer. But why he then joins the group is glossed over.

The movie shows a bleak vision of humanity faced with an enemy we can't fight, forced to run and hide.

Fill up on the red tape.

This movie is unpopular with a lot of people because it requires some thought. You have to understand where the creatures are coming from, what they want, what they do to you, why they can't be fought, and just what this means for humanity.

Be prepared for something like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but with a few more book smarts.

Doombreed rating: * * * *

Spoiler (highlight to read):

The creatures are using the signal from the Wi-Fi system to move about. So, at the end, when the narrator explains that the cities belong to the creatures, and the humans are left in the "dead zones" between them, one can't help but wonder whether any of the military dudes we see have ever heard of an EMP weapon, which would completely neutralise the system for long enough to manually destroy the towers.

Hell, even a relatively small nuke (by modern standards) exploded in the atmosphere would produce an electronics-frying EMP pulse over much of the continental United States.

Okay, so nuking home is a little bit of a drastic measure, but to prevent the creatures from killing the entire world? Yeah, I'd take whatever crap one bomb would make.