Rypro 525

son of a...
that can never be a good sign (movie sucks and they need to fix it)

clemente

I don't think so, this would seem to be a sign of confidence. They're taking it out its slot right now, on the heels of two horror movies making 20 mil plus in two weeks and moving it to a plush Summertime slot?

You don't move movie to the summer if you think it sucks, you move it away from the summer if you think it sucks. Especially if they could have opened it as scheduled and easily kept the teen horror train going.

From another persepective, getting buzz would have been hard since it was scheduled to come out in three weeks. The other two March 3rd released have been airing TV spots for the past week.

Seantn

This is from Dimension, right? They're the masters of delaying a films release in order to chop that film into a form of unrecognition from it's original state.

When it is released in July , it will be 74 minutes long, plus credits, and it will not be screened for critics. Just a guess!

I want it to be good, though.

Rypro 525

hopefully it keeps the R rating it currently has.

I was wondering, is the japanese version graphic in terms of violence or images? My mom wants to watch this as well, but isn't a fan of the extreme stuff (i kind of made her watch audition, and she had her eyes covered for the entire last 15 minutes).

RichC2

No, it is not graphic at all.

oceanfr

sounds stupid

RichC2

Funny thing, on paper a lot of great movies do.

eXcentris

And the chance that this remake of Pulse will be a great movie is approximately
0.001%

Venom

i found the original to be quite chilling at moments. easily some of the better "skin crawling" feelings since a few scenes in the tale of two sisters. as of plot, i kinda got it. however, i like watching horror late at night, usually buzzed. which isn't the best way to watch a subtitled film. plus for this one, due to timing, i finished it in three viewings which sucked.

the trailer for the remake, looked to be extremely close to the original. but i do agree with Harosa...


if this remake is spot on or very close to the original, it should be pretty good. however the trailer also makes it look a bit cheesy, like it's White Noise 2.

starseed1981

Big fan of the original, definitley had a better atmosphere than 90 percent of the horror movies out there today. Plus, this thing has Vernoica Mars herself in it so it can't be that bad.

JesseCuster

Veronica Mars is starting to become a small phenomenon pop culture wise. It's starting to get referenced here and there and it's been a critical hit since it's beginning. I'm guessing it got bumped to the summer because of the starring presence of Kristen Bell. I kind of view her career similarly to that of Sarah Michelle Geller in Buffy, through I do like Bell more.

Seantn

Apparently the Weinstein's are playing their favorite game with this film...Musical Chairs!

First the release date was March 3rd. Then it was pushed to July 14th. In May, the production re-shot some scenes and some new scenes. They did a test screening with those scenes in the film in late May.

The results of that test screening? They yanked the film from it's July 14th slot.

Now the film is scheduled for September.

Rypro 525

god damn. either the movie is really bad, or the test audiences are stupid. just release the movie already. i have heard rumors that dimension doesn't want an R rating.

clemente

Damn it. I was really looking forward to it too. As far as horror movies go, it pretty much had the summer season cornered. I had high hopes based on the first trailer, but with all the shifting, I'm thinking the movie could be getting worse and worse with the tweaking.

Supermallet

The original is in my trifecta of J-horror films (along with The Ring and Audition), and I cannot see how it could be improved upon. The very fact it's in English means one of the creepiest parts (the people saying "Help me" on the phone) will be less effective, as the very sound of the Japanese phrase "help me" is creepy as hell the way they do it in the original. Hearing how it's being pushed around and reshot, I have even less interest in the remake.

Plus, I highly doubt any remake would keep the existential themes of the original intact.

Julie Walker

I heard the ending was being reshot to be more 'audience friendly'. So if the new ending version got bad test screenings. I would hope they would just go back to the original supposed to be more bleaker ending.

But this is the Weinsteins. When they tinker with a film, they never release the planned original version(if it ever got completed before all the reshoots).

LiquidSky

I'm a fan of J horror but did not care for "Pulse" at all.

LiquidSky

The original was pretty much PG-13 territory until one thing near the end that is shown very quickly.

Rival11

Alright, I'll admit it. I hated this movie so much (original version) I turned it off a little after half way through - it didn't do anything for me.

Infection (J-horror) is ten times better than this flick and I would recommend it anyday over pulse............well, obviously.

RichC2

Whoa, someone actually managed to finish Infection, I'm impressed!

Seantn

I thought the original Pulse was great. I really enjoyed it.

The new one looks like they really re-did a lot of the plot and threw in some 'teen horror' elements. Regardless of whether you think that's a good idea or bad idea, the studio certainly isn't showing much faith in this remake.

flagstone

I ended up giving the original 3-stars in the "Rate 'Em" thread; some good ideas but as things went on it just turned into a series of "well that was interesting" moments that I didn't really connect into a coherent story. But I don't have a lot of J-horror experience - I kind of got the same vibe from Tale of Two Sisters, so maybe it's just not my thing.

But I agree that the trailers for the remake don't insipre a lot of confidence - there may be a more explicit story present, but it isn't clear it's going to be a better one.

Richard Malloy

I've seen some of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films (Cure, Seance, Doppelganger, Pulse), and my favorite is easily "Pulse". It might be somewhat derivative in terms of subject matter ("Serial Experiments: Lain" really came to mind), but it exudes those wonderfully dreamlike rhythms (again, not unlike "Lain") that Kurosawa seems so particularly adept at achieving. It really conjures a peculiarly surreal spell, nearly approaching a hypnotic state. But to call it a horror film is a little bit of a stretch, even though it has many horror elements.

Again, think "Lain" to the extent that the plot seems to evoke something like ghosts invading the world via our communications technology (the Internet, etc.) ostensibly to provoke a suicide epidemic. But it seems more about the alienation of modern life, the inability to communicate. In some ways, it's a teen drama even though the primary characters are a bit older (but not "teens" with the witty banter, close familial ties, and chatty natures of Veronica Mars or Buffy). It seems to morph into something akin to an apocalyptic allegory vis many zombie films where an ever shrinking cadre of survivors tries to keep moving on in an increasingly desolated landscape.

The dreamy wavelike rhythms I spoke of may well bore some viewers used to more conventional scares to sleep. And while the film has a plot, sorta, and even some explanations for all the bizarre goings-on, most of the imagery feels essentially archetypal, metaphors for the modern condition: ghosts seemingly trapped in the shadowy peeling walls of crumbling buildings, the murky suggestions of something terrifying in the depths of computer screens, doors and windows sealed with red masking tape. But more than fear, these images create feelings of loneliness and despair.

It it's really true that Wes Craven is doing a US remake, I can't imagine a worse choice. Love him or hate him (I find him barely mediocre), I can only shudder at how the clunky obviousness of his themes, the overwrought, hamfisted editing, and his seeming inability to not engage in the lamest genre conventions... all this will utterly ruin the best part of the film, as one reviewer I read put it (paraphrasing) "all those glorious dream waves will surely be lost in translation." And I cannot imagine this story populated with chatty-Cathy American quasi-teens, giggling and "Oh my gawing" from setpiece to setpiece. I'm certain they suffer from their own brand of alienation and anomie, but its manifestations seem to speak to an entirely different sort of false consciousness.

Seantn

Oookay, this film has been moved once again, but this time it's to August 11th.

maingon

i didnt like the orginal too slow, this one looks better then the orginal, I will see just for Kristen Bell