Kairo (AKA Pulse 2001)

Japanese ghost-stories are catching on like wild-fever here at the Video Sewer house. Once you get a taste for something new-ish like this you tend to start popping them like little candy bottle caps. I’m sure you remember those.

Kairo tastes like a chocolate Necco wafer, actually. It ain’t real chocolate but it’s still good. It’s difficult to really pick out what this movie is about; it mixes the straight scare agenda of Ring with a social conscience, but in the end you can’t say who the ghost is or why it takes people away.

Young disaffected and disconnected Japanese kids stumble upon a website that asks them if they’d like to see a ghost. Control-Alt-Delete is probably the way to go, but many say yes and soon slow-moving, shadowy phantoms with crazily dispassionate faces start appearing. By movie’s end it seems like the whole world is desolate, crumbling and on fire. Don’t expect to walk away from this one feeling good.

Kairo delivers a few really spine-crawling moments without completely connecting; there’s never a moment of horror, just slowly mounting dread. This is a disappointment, because our protagonists are totally relatable young adults; people trapped in their (beautiful, but) cage-like apartments amidst a big indifferent world, unable to comprehend or learn from each other, but willing to wholeheartedly delve into the world-wide-web.

And then they make the mistake of going into the weird room that’s been sealed with red tape and someone whispers “help me” in your ear and a shadow starts moving. It’s then that you think that maybe the ghost on display is the guy with his face glued to a monitor all day.

Kairo’s sepia-toned, heavily oppressive air and insidious use of sound mark this as serious stuff, and without the dingbat cardboard cut-outs of other horror movies, it’s just too bad no-one ever thought to go straight for the jugular. J-Horror junkies should definitely give this a look, however, for well-done atmospheric chills.