Thursday, January 13, 2022
Pulse (Kairo)
- Commentary: Within the last few weeks when I was doing basic research for this site this movie captured my attention. I'm not sure, but I think I may have encountered it during a discussion of the EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) phenomenon resulting from a nuclear blast on an episode of Super Critical Podcast [the hosts of the episode to which I listened, by the way, are wary of what has been attributed to this phenonmenon]. At any rate, whatever was said piqued my interest and I ordered the movie.
I haven't watched it, yet, and will report back once I do. In the meantime, I discovered that it is listed on TimeOut - Movies's latest (December 10, 2021) compilation of The 100 best horror movies of all time. Since the last time the Wikipedia article on the film (linked immediately below) referenced the list in 2014 this movie has moved up one notch from 66 to 65.
I couldn't help it, by the way. I perused the entire list to see which movies in my collection appear on the list. Here's a rundown. The names of the movies I own are linked to the articles TimeOut - Movies wrote about each movie, including their current ranking (the list is reranked periodically - by the way, TimeOut's The 100 best horror movies of all time list includes two write-ups, the initial for the film as it appears in the list and an additional, different write-up when you click on the title; unfortunately, the html is so convoluted for the list that I couldn't figure out how to link to the initial write-up, so, if you want to access the first write-up, you'll need to scroll through the list; it's usually worth it, until the list is recalibrated, I suppose), after which I linked each to its location on my site:- 82. Midsommar - Midsommar in this journal
- 67. The Witch - The Witch in this journal
- 65. Kairo/Pulse - Pulse (Kairo) in this journal
- 57. The Vanishing - The Vanishing in this journal
- 56. The Sixth Sense - The Sixth Sense in this journal
- 54. Repulsion - Repulsion in this journal
- 39. Jacob's Ladder - Jacob's Ladder in this journal
- 29. The Birds - The Birds in this journal
- 7. Rosemary's Baby - Rosemary's Baby in this journal
You may notice that, in my own labeling, I did not assign the "horror" genre to all these films. I thought about it, as I was compiling this post, but decided to keep my original ranking. Horror is different for different people. Those that I didn't label as horror don't have quite the horrific impact for which I look in a horror film.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Kumiko Asō Michi Kudo Haruhiko Kato Ryosuke Kawashima Koyuki Harue Karasawa Kurume Arisaka Junko Sasano Masatoshi Matsuo Toshio Yabe Shinji Takeda Yoshizaki Jun Fubuki Michi's mother Shun Sugata Boss
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 2001
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Labels: §, apocalyptic, dramaE, folk-horror, psychological1, suspense3
