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STUDIO: Columbia
MSRP: $14.94
RATED: PG-13
RUNNING TIME: 98 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES: None
The Pitch
“It’s your average machines-become-self-aware movie, except, instead of machines, it’ll be electricity!”
The Humans
Cliff De “Don’t confuse me with Burt” Young, Roxanne “Roxie” Hart, Joey “Not Joseph” Lawrence and Matthew “Not Matt” Lawrence
The Nutshell
A young boy, David (Joey Lawrence), visits his dad and his dad’s new wife for the summer. He begins to notice strange things happening in his house – similar things happened in the boarded up house across the street. With the help of a scary old man, the kid finds out that electricity (or the essence of electricity… they never really get into the conscious of the electricity itself) is out to kill him.
Electricity is really out to kill everyone, but only one house at a time (after all, why wouldn’t a ruthless serial killer like electrical current strike multiple houses at once? Why bother simply frying an entire nation at once as mindless drones sit and watch American Idol?) Soon, his dad and dad’s wife believe him and electricity targets them for termination too.
The Package
About as crappy as the plot. There are no extras of any kind on the disc (unless you count French subtitles). The sound is surprisingly good, especially in some of the smaller sound effects (crackle of electricity, current moving over wires, etc.).
It takes more than a Lawrence brother to make a movie a classic…
The Lowdown
The biggest problem this movie has is that the plot is remarkably stupid. Electricity is a serial killer. I feel dumb even writing that. It’s as if writer/director Paul Golding watched the Terminator and said “yea, machines becoming self aware. That’s pretty cool. I’ll take it a step further. I’ll make it electricity! It’s electric! Boogie-woogie-woogie!”
…it takes TWO!!!!
The surprising thing is that the movie, at times, makes you forget how stupid it is. That is high praise indeed. Above-average acting (anything with two Lawrence brothers has got to be good) and a decent amount of suspense help the movie overcome the shaky plot.
The pace of the film and the tension it creates is surprisingly good. For instance, there are a few scenes where a character has to “investigate” something (a noise, a TV turning on, etc.). The character then creeps into a room to check out what they heard. This is a pretty standard scene for any slasher flick. But, the idea seems to work well in Pulse and actually causes some suspense.
Unfortunately, the positives do not outweigh the negatives. Beyond the plot being dumb is that fact that it is never explained. In any way. Not even the kooky old man (who randomly knows that electricity is trying to kill anyone) has a theory why. The opening credits show an electronic pulse (being generated I guess) from a power plant. Maybe that was supposed to convey that some pulses are just born bad? I don’t know.
3.75 out of 10
The Nerd Herd makes plans to gleam the cube.