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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peņa made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Pulse

Story
When Mattie's boyfriend Josh hangs himself, Mattie is devastated, but it doesn't take long before Josh tries to contact Mattie and her friends from beyond the grave. She starts investigating the reason to why Josh hanged himself and finds out about this computer virus that infects people and also about those on the other side trying to get into the world she lives in through technology that is computers, cellphones etc. Those things on the other side wants what they don't have anymore, and that is life, and now they've come to take it.

Comments
Pulse turned out to be one sad pathetic remake, probably the worst remake to date so far, even The Fog was slightly better and that says a lot. It might look all right, but is basically just hollowness defined and has nothing to offer except for a major headache. It actually took me three times before I could sit through the whole flick. The first time I watched the intro, it was ridiculous and just the thought alone of watching what would come after that wasn't very appealing. Second time I watched half the flick and it was just crap, but eventually I figured that I had to watch the whole thing which I just recently did and that I now kinda regret doing.

If you've seen the Japanese original that is Pulse/Kairo, you know how the story goes. Personally, I think that Kairo is one of the better films out there when it comes to Japanese horror, and obviously it was a hard movie to remake, but on the other hand, that's no real excuse either. I'm not gonna go into detail about the Japanese film, but if you've seen it, you know that it captures this whole concept of loneliness and isolation as well as it captures horror and mystery in an excellent way. This American remake just felt like a really lame clone, trying to do what the Japanese had done, but failed miserably at it every step of the way.

Pulse Pulse

Since we already knew the story from the original, they should've put more focus on being different instead of trying to do it all over again since of course that wouldn't work, but apparently they thought so. It has none of the genuine feeling that the Japanese Pulse had, none of the creepy atmosphere or none of the scares or feeling of desperation either. I found it extremely hard to sit through the whole film and throughout the whole movie, it felt like nothing of what was going on could've mattered less. It's just a very shallow movie that has no soul, no feeling and is what I would call a menace to horror society.

What may be the worst thing here is that this movie obviously had a pretty high budget and that's always a bad thing when the films turn out to be total crap. I mean, there are way better ways to spend that money, film-wise that is, since there are a lot of talented people out there with original ideas that could work wonders with just 10 percent of the budget or so, but unfortunately most of them never gets the chance (yours truly included haha). The acting was not bad but I can't say that it was great either, and in the end it doesn't really matter because this film was just one big commersial crapfest that should be avoided. Sad thing, like always, is that there will probably be a lot of teens finding this movie to be a scary horror film and that has no idea that it's just a remake. But what can you do, the world is full of idiots..

Final Comments
Just watch the original Japanese flick and avoid this one. It's not worth the time and you won't get any smarter watching it (you might get dumber though). I can't belive that they even released this one, and I wonder if the people behind it are happy with the final result. I would definitely beat myself up for making a movie like this.

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Pulse

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Jim Sonzero
WRITING CREDITS: Ray Wright, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Milian
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 90 min

RATING: 1/10

Pulse Website/IMDB Click here
Pulse Trailer Click here

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