Kairo (Pulse)

This Japanese thriller from 2001 is getting the American remake treatment in a month starring Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars), and to be honest I don't think it will have quite the same impact. While the film is extremely slow and kind of boring and confusing at times, it also has a deep message about the way our modern society communicates. No one talks person-to-person anymore; computers and cell phones are the preferred way of connecting and because of that no one really knows anyone else. A girl who works in a flower shop and a technophobic college student become the first to notice that people around them are disappearing and that spectral visions begin to manifest themselves, first starting in computers, then in person. The ghosts are really just people who have become so disconnected from reality that they have crossed over into a world between heaven and hell, the loneliness that they feel due to no 'real' friends takes them over and they disappear. In a world where MMORPGs, MySpace and text messaging are the main ways that we talk to each other this film becomes very, very frightening.

4 out of 5


P.S. You can read my review of the American remake, Pulse, by clicking here.



*written 2/26/06