On Pulse

2006-08-12

I watched the movie Pulse. After the movie I had to check to see if I had a pulse. The web site can be found here, but don?t visit unless you have plenty of free bandwidth.

As you?ve seen on the previews, the story is about ghosts that come through technology to get at people. That?s a pretty good idea for a story. As so often happens these days, a good story is badly told when the movie is made. This one was just tedious.

The main character, Mattie (played by Kristen Bell) is reasonably developed and sympathetic. She doesn?t get used to tell the story very well, though we learn enough about her to actually care, a little. After that, the characters are a bit flat. Even the male lead, Dexter (played by Ian Somerhalder) is given so little screen time that he can?t become a real character despite a good effort put forth by Somerhalder. Everyone else is just a horror movie cutout, though again well played.

Of course, that?s not the worst of it. The cinematography sucked. We once again see a movie where erratic camera motion and bad lighting is mistaken for mood and suspense. Typically this is done when the movie maker has no clue about telling a story and is hoping that trickery will disorient an audience enough to make up for it.

No doubt about it, this movie was boring. I barely stayed awake throughout. The fault clearly belongs to the director.