A few quick questions: How many of you saw PULSE – the American remake of KAIRO? Okay, a few of you… How many of you actually LIKED it? That’s what I thought… Finally, can ANY of you explain why we’d get not one but TWO sequels for it? I’ll be waiting…
Yes, the Direct-to-DVD market continues to churn out sequels to movies nobody particularly liked in the first place, like the DRACULA 2000, CHILDREN OF THE CORN and PROPHECY flicks. If there is a single blamable perpetrator, I would have to go with Joel Soisson, who’s filmography is so stacked with subpar sequels – many of which you might be shocked to discover were actually made – that it should come as absolutely no surprise that he’s the man in charge of PULSE: AFTERMATH and PULSE: INVASION.
If there’s an angle to this news that doesn’t make you eager to read a different article, it’s the plotlines of both films. Courtesy of Bloody Disgusting, here’s what AFTERMATH is about:
The world has been reshaped by the invasion of ghosts via the wireless internet. Cities are deserted, technology has been destroyed and the few remaining human beings eschew anything electrical in order to avoid a confrontation with the soulless ghosts that now wander the planet. Most of the ghosts are doomed to a repetitive loop of something they did while they were still despairing humans (a man repeatedly hangs himself, for example), but there are some ghosts so locked in denial, they do not know they are dead. They continue to haunt their homes, wrapped in fear that their souls will soon be torn from them.
PULSE: INVASION: It is now seven years later and the survivors on Earth have settled into a primitive lifestyle completely void of electronics. The clusters of human survivors live together in refugee camps as the phantoms have taken over the cities. Justine is now a teenager and she escapes to the city to try and make a life for herself where she is not a drain on her adopted family (her parents both became phantoms in part one). She heads in to the city at the urging of Adam, a seeming survivor in the city that lures her with promises of understanding and friendship.
Sounds at least ambitious, if not settling into “WHAT f*ckin movie are these sequels to again?!” territory. What do you all say – am I wrong in my presumption that you don’t give two farts about these things? And if I’m right, then who in the hell are these movies being made for anyway? Am I just a naive idiot who doesn’t understand the economics of the video industry? You make the call!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Kristen Bell will be returning.