Pulse Reviews

PULSE is an original, highly visual, intense thriller that becomes horrific as it weaves its tale of everyday household items run amok. One evening, Bill (Cliff DeYoung) and his wife (Roxanne Hart) are awakened by a neighbor who is destroying his house, having presumably gone mad. The next day, Bill's son, David (Joey Lawrence), arrives from Colorado to visit his father and stepmother. He's not happy to be there, especially when he learns that the crazy neighbor's wife was killed just before the man himself lost control. It seems that the woman died when a piece of metal was spewed from her garbage disposal, piercing her eye. Slowly, the electrical world around David begins to change--the TV burns out, the furnace shoots flames. David, eager to discover the truth of these ruptures, breaks into the house across the street, where he meets an elderly electrician who tells of voices in the wires and hints about "them." By the climax, the family is trapped in the house, battling fire, water, and electricity. Writer-director Paul Golding succeeds where many horror directors fail: in making the incredible believable. The idea of electricity having a mind of its own is silly, of course, but with Golding's guidance the notion becomes frighteningly possible as he generates fear from the recognition that most of us don't know exactly how an electrical device works. Especially effective is the refusal to provide an exact reason as to why the chaos is happening--the filmmakers leave it to our imagination (providing a possible alien connection). Because we are put in the same position as the characters themselves, we can identify with their fear.