Pulse – Unrated (HD-DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: D
If you
are a teen with a cell phone out in the middle of nowhere, you must die! That is the hook (no pun intended) of Jim
Sonzero’s amazingly bad Pulse
(2006), yet another quasi-snuff thriller where teens are simply set up with no
suspense to be annihilated. There is so
much recycling of genre clichés that they should have used light blue body bags
for the cell phones and dead bodies to complete the sick joke.
To cover
up the formula, the killers are members of the living dead, but they look more
like they are from a bad video game or costume party. Since the script co-written by Wes Craven
(who has managed much better) is dead on arrival, this is redundant mess that
feels much longer than its 88 minutes.
If you take the pulse of this film, you too will want to give it a mercy
killing.
The 2.35
X 1 1080p digital High Definition image is one of the most degraded of the many
degraded feature Horror releases we have had to suffer through lately, but this
one is so bad (as lensed by Mark Plummer) that it actually distracts from what
little realism this mess has on any level.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 on a Plus level is no better, with limited
surrounds and fidelity that almost “screams” its low budget and Elia Cmiral
score (Ronin) can’t save this turkey. There is also a Dolby TrueHD version that
just shows the limits of the audio and joins Clerks II and The Wicker Man
remake, both on HD-DVD, as the poorest showings in the 192/24 format to
date. The combination of picture and
sound is lame, barely better than what a regular DVD would deliver. Extras include two very, very, very long
audio commentary tracks, visual effects and making of featurettes, original
theatrical trailer and deleted/alternate scenes that are poor.
- Nicholas Sheffo
