Truly Dreadful Film

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

If you want to see a movie where evil electricity taunts and haunts a horribly acted kid played by Joey Lawrence, then this is for you. There are some interesting shots here and there, but it's played more as dread rather than real horror since almost no one dies. Of special note is the scene where Joey Lawrence's little brother is playing with his GI JOE toys and says "The Cobras are attacking the Terror Drome," which is hilariously wrong since the TerrorDrome is their base! Stupid kid.

I remember watching this one a couple of times back in the 80's. I recall liking it. Having now watched it again for the first time since those days, I have to admit that it's not quite as good as I remembered. The main problem with this one is its central premise is pretty unscary. Electricity is not the most threatening of things and it's quite difficult to base a horror movie around the concept of evil electricity. The film-makers were possibly in a bit of a conundrum regarding this as well seeing as they ultimately offer no real explanation for these electrical impulses, although it is made clear that it comes from a lightning bolt that strikes near a power plant. To confuse things somewhat we have a guy who pops up and suggests that the electricity company are to blame for these pulses. At the end of the day, your guess is as good as mine.The story is about a boy who moves back in with his dad and step-mum. A seemingly intelligent electrical pulse is turning some suburban homes in the area into deadly death-traps. The film begins with one such victim going mad as a result of this and destroying his home. Lo and behold, the same thing starts happening again.Pulse is pretty unusual in that no one actually dies. This is extremely rare in horror cinema and the movie in general is very restrained indeed. Maybe too restrained but I appreciate the fact that this one was going against expectations. The only vaguely disturbing scene was when a character is scalded very badly when being trapped in a shower with the hot water on full blast. But the most well executed scenes involve close-up shots of melting electrical circuits. I suppose the fact that these were the best bits might go some way to explaining part of the problem with Pulse. It's a likable enough film with decent characters and performances. It's just not very thrilling and that's essentially the problem.

I was expecting more from this, even though it was just PG-13. I thought a number of houses were involved, or at least a number of deaths in one house (to sound a bit morbid). However, there's one death in the backstory and one offscreen death. Apart from that, just injuries.Not much explanation is given for why electricity is going bad, or why just in one house at a time, all in one neighborhood. Or if the electricity isn't really going bad and it's just bad workmanship.The scariest thing about the movie is the bowl cut hairstyles of the Lawrence brothers. Egads!

Pulse starts in an ordinary L.A. street which is disturbed by the antics of one of it's residents named Hank Jordan who is wrecking his house with a baseball bat, the police are called & break into Hank's house but find him dead. Young David Rockland (Joseph Lawrence) is flying into L.A. from Colorado to spend some time with his Father & Stepmother Bill (Cliff De Young) & Ellen (Roxanne Hart), things go well at first but one night when David is left home alone the T.V. & other various electrical appliances seem to take a life of their own & after almost being burned alive by a pilot light David is understandably nervous. Then David hears about the stories concerning the Jordan's & what happened, David becomes convinced that there is an evil presence in his Father's house that will try to kill them, at first Bill isn't having any of it but as the mysterious 'accidents' begin to add up he starts to change his mind...Written & directed by Paul Golding I thought Pulse was an average horror/thriller that never even came close to getting my pulse racing. The script doesn't seem to know what it wants to be or who it wants to appeal too & is loose to say the least, nothing is explained in any sort of detail. What the evil electrical force is or where it came from or what it's trying to do, absolutely nothing about it is revealed. I also think that Pulse will disappoint most potential viewers in the sense that as a fan of horror films which Pulse supposedly is I was expecting a widespread outbreak of electrical devices turning against their owners all across America but in actual fact the pulse never leaves the confines of one house even though it could go anywhere & it doesn't kill a single person on screen, that's right not one person is killed in Pulse which just isn't good enough as far as I'm concerned. Instead director Golding thinks his audience would rather sit through chunks of boring dialogue, stupid unexplained narrative & an annoying teenage kid as the lead, well Mr. Golding I can tell you now that most horror fans like films which are scary & contain some semblance of horror. As it is Pulse tells it's story competently enough despite it's lack of any explanations & while there's nothing spectacular about it it's an OK way to pass 90 odd minutes if you don't expect too much.Director Golding films everything without much style or visual flair but there are a few really effective scenes in which his camera goes 'into' the electrical equipment & there are some nice close-up shots of the circuit boards & wiring as the pulse melts the solder & rearranges it for reasons I'm not sure about, these shots are easily the most memorable thing about Pulse which says it all really. Pulse isn't scary & there's not much of a horror atmosphere to it either. There are some really dumb bits at the end when David a young kid manages to stop his Father falling back by grabbing him even though his Father probably weighs three times that of David, it wouldn't work in reality would it? Neither can I forget the scene when a circular saw manages to fire a screw at Bill & hit him in the forehead! Forget about any proper gore, someone's hand gets cut, someone is burnt & a screw hits someone's forehead is all we get.Technically Pulse is alright, there's nothing really wrong with it. The acting is OK but again nothing special, Lawrence as the young kid gets very irritating.Pulse is an OK film, I'm sure there are people out there who will like it but for me it was too dull, it never explained itself & the decision not to kill anyone during the entire duration of the film was a bad one, a very bad one. There are better films out there.