Top tier entry in the canon of aesthetically gorgeous, reactionary Japanese media about the internet as a destabilizing social force. There is a devastating drama buried here about the aftermath of suicide - the banal normality of existing in spaces previously inhabited by friends now filled only with doubt and grief - but it's flattened into a cartoonish anxiety of the internet as an inherently isolating and alienating technology.
There are certainly conversations to be had about how the internet has reshaped all aspects of our lives (many of them not positive), but despite its quiet ponderance on death and the afterlife, Pulse does't apply that same sensitivity and curiosity to its central theme (the last ghost we see literally makes dial up noises while crying about how they are forever alone). By the end, society has completely vanished save our computer adverse slacker and a girl who works at a green house, planes falling out of mid air and cars left smoking in the streets. Whatever subtlety the opening moments had are replaced by imagery that wouldn't feel out of place in Left Behind.
That said, I cannot say enough about how gorgeous and textured Pulse is as a movie. Scenes are framed either as claustrophobic close ups or from detached, security camera vantage points, always a bizarre angle that creates a dream like detachment. The hazy film grain and muted colors provide such a soft, intimate mood as we switch between cluttered apartments, nondescript offices, and so many incredible stairwells (truly, the stair scenes look so good). Every scene on a bus or train I would gladly hang on my wall, all full of a melancholy sense of moving but not going anywhere. The score can be pretty overbearing in some scenes, but broadly Pulse is remarkably understated given its genre peers (the promotional art is the closest this gets to actual horror imagery, outside some uncomfortable long shots).
Praying for the day we're able to make art about the internet that engages with all its messy contradictions rather than the blunt fear that underpins so much turn-of-the-century media. Until then, well, at least it looks cool as hell.
Content warnings: multiple suicides and suicidal ideation throughout