Simultaneously apocalyptic and existential, Kurosawa's film is deeply ambivalent toward technology-it feels a bit like a Luddite's objection to AOL chat rooms and webcams. Indeed, just like the American slasher films that punished teenagers for their sexual promiscuity, Pulse first obliterates the characters who are most intimate with computers. The first indication that something is not right in the world comes when a computer geek working on some unspecified project goes incommunicado and unexpectedly commits suicide; the disc that one of his co-workers recovers from his desk contains some very disquieting imagery.

Meanwhile, the amiably computer-illiterate Kawashima befriends Harue, a computer-lab worker who's interested in his unusual tech-support issues. It seems the Internet is dialing him up, rather than the other way around, and asking him if he wants to meet a ghost. Kawashima is a little befuddled by Harue, who is preoccupied with her feeling that people can never become truly close to one another, but he does his best to assuage her anxiety. It's his ability to convince her that life is worth living that Kurosawa is truly interested in.

The central premise here is that technology aggravates, rather than assuages, our existential loneliness. At one point, a graduate student (he has programmed a graphic simulation of human relationships) whips out a theory to explain the appearance of ghosts in the material world. He postulates that the spirit world is full, and is therefore manifesting itself in the physical realm. To what end is never quite clear-the film suggests that the dead want to make the living understand that they will be just as lonely in the afterlife as they are on earth. Still, I'm not sure why it's in the best interests of the dead to reveal a harrowing picture of eternity that's going to make the living want to kill themselves immediately; then again, I suppose the dead needn't behave particularly rationally.

Anyway, all that talk put me immediately in mind of Dawn of the Dead, whose tag line was "When there's no more room in HELL . the dead will walk the earth," and Pulse eventually shrouds itself in a similarly despairing and apocalyptic patina. I actually wouldn't have minded seeing Pulse go on for another hour or so, further exploring the human aftermath of the hellishness that it eventually depicts (and that becomes all the more eerie following September 11). It would certainly make an interesting double feature with the Romero film.

Plot mechanics aside, Kurosawa tells his story using some of the creepiest imagery yet seen, exploring the question of how ghosts might manifest themselves before the living. Pulse's best scenes are so magisterial and disturbing that you may want to crawl under your chair. However, Kurosawa takes his sweet time in getting to them. The first 20 minutes or so qualify as one of the greatest horror-movie overtures I've ever seen, but for the most part this is languid, repetitive stuff-reminiscent of the only other Kurosawa film I've seen, Cure. Hideo Nakata's superificially similar Ring remains more frightening and feels more irrationally plausible, perhaps due in part to its relative narrative economy.

So Pulse hobbles along at a glacial pace that may be a directorial trademark. Still, its best moments are gloriously unsettling. It's a shame, then, that most North American audiences may never get to see it. At the film's New York premiere, programmer (and Film Comment editor) Gavin Smith confirmed that Miramax has bought U.S. distribution rights, and expressed his fear that, because Wes Craven is considering the remake, the original may wind up buried. And more's the pity-it's doubtful that an American director would be willing to dredge up the same feelings of despair that Kurosawa conjures, the retina of his cinema eye scarred by atom-bomb flashes and his heart full of fear for the fate of the human soul.