Pulse is an 2006 horror film, directed by Jim Sonzero and written by Wes Craven and Ray Wright. It stars Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Milian and a cameo by Oscar-nominee and veteran cult horror actor Brad Dourif. It is a remake of the 2001 Japanese horror film Kairo.

It was widely panned by critics, with a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 27/100 on Metacritic. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is presented as, "Another stale American remake of a successful Japanese horror film, Pulse bypasses the emotional substance of the original and overcompensates with pumped-up visuals and every known horror cliche."

Plot

Josh enters a dark university library intending to meet Douglas Zeigler. There he is attacked by a humanoid spirit that sucks the will to live out of him. Some days later, Josh's girlfriend, Mattie visits his apartment and finds him looking pale shortly before he commits suicide by hanging himself with an ethernet cable.

Mattie and her friends begin to receive online messages from Josh asking for help but assume that Josh's computer is still on and that a virus is creating the messages. Mattie learns that Josh's computer has been sold to Dexter McCarthy (Dex), who finds a number of strange videos on the computer.

Mattie receives a package that Josh mailed two days before he died. Inside are rolls of red tape and a message telling her that the tape keeps "them" out, although he doesn't know why. Later, Dex visits Mattie and shows her video messages Josh was sending to Ziegler. Josh had hacked Ziegler's computer system, stolen and then distributed a virus. This virus had unlocked a portal that connected the realm of the living to the realm of the dead. Josh believed he had coded a counter to the virus and wanted to meet Ziegler at the library. Josh's counter-program is found on a memory stick taped inside the PC case with red tape.

Before, however, Stone was attacked by one of the spirits while looking in Josh's room. Izzie was later attacked by a spirit while she was washing some clothes. They both disintegrate as soon as the bruises they get go around all of their bodies.

Dex and Mattie visit Zeigler and find his room entirely plastered in red tape. They believe the red tape keeps the spirits out. Zeigler tells them of a project he worked on where he found "frequencies no one knew existed." Opening these frequencies somehow allowed the spirits to travel to the world of the living. Zeigler also tells them that that these spirits "take away your will to live" and where to find the main server infected with the virus.

Dex and Mattie find the server and upload Josh's fix, causing the system to crash and the spirits to vanish. Moments later, however, the system reboots and the spirits return leaving Mattie and Dexter with no option but to flee the city by car. Over the car radio, Mattie and Dex hear a radio report from the Army announcing the location of several "safe zones" where there are no Internet connections, cell phones, or televisions. As Dex and Mattie drive to a safe zone, the film concludes with a voice-over from Mattie saying "We can never go back. The cities are theirs. Our lives are different now. What was meant to connect us to one another, instead connected us to forces that we could have never imagined. The world we knew is gone, but the will to live never dies. Not for us, and not for them." and clips of abandoned cities, including a window of an apartment with Josh looking through it.

Cast

Actor	Role
Kristen Bell	Mattie Webber
Ian Somerhalder	Dexter McCarthy
Christina Milian	Isabelle "Izzie" Fuentes
Rick Gonzalez	Stone
Samm Levine	Tim Steinberg
Jonathan Tucker	Josh Ockmann
Kel O'Neill	Douglas Zeigler
Ron Rifkin	Dr. Waterson
Zach Grenier	Professor Cardiff
Octavia Spencer	Landlady
Carlos A. Alvarez	Webcam Man
Joseph Gatt	Über Phantom
Brad Dourif	Thin Bookish Guy

Reception

Pulse had a poor critical reception. Rotten Tomatoes gave it an aggregate score of 12% and an average rating of 3.5/10, commenting that it is "a stale remake" that "bypasses the emotional substance of the original".

Box office

The film grossed over $8 million in its opening weekend in the United States. By its close on 12 October 2006 the film had grossed just over $20 million in the US. Foreign box office was just over $7.5 million, for a worldwide take of almost $28 million, compared to a production budget of approximately $20.5 million.
As a DVD rental, the film has grossed a further $25 million.

Release

The film's planned release date was 3 March 2006, but was delayed until 11 August 2006.

Sequels

Two direct-to-video sequels — Pulse 2: Afterlife
and Pulse 3: Invasion.
— have been released. Pulse 2 was released September 30 and Pulse 3 was released December 23, 2008, both were written and directed by Joel Soisson, writer of Highlander: Endgame and writer/director of The Prophecy: Uprising and The Prophecy: Forsaken.