In the past month, it has been my pleasure to view Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (translates to Pulse, although sometimes known as The Circuit), a psychological chiller belonging to the new wave of Asian horror that was birthed by the infamous Ring. The genre enjoyed its fifteen minutes of freshness and innovation, only to be set upon by hack directors attempting to ride on the coat tails of superior works. Then again, in any artistic movement, there are leaders and there are followers. For every Kairo and Whispering Corridors, there are countless undistinguished bores such as Cello, Gawi, Shutter, Ryeong and many more that simply aren’t worth mentioning.
You might be asking me what makes Kairo stand apart from the pack. After all, most of this Asian horror is just repackaging the same ol’ mainstream tripe with a new ribbon on top and selling it to Tool fans, so they have something to talk about with their little friends, earning and few more scene points in the process. The exotic is marketable, after all. Kairo uses the typical ghost story as an allegory for modern day alienation and communication breakdown, despite the omnipotence of technology and in this particular case, the Internet (yes, I’m aware of the ‘irony’ of it all).
The story concerns itself with a tight-knit group of employees at Sunny Plant Sales, located in Tokyo. The lead character, Michi (Kumiko Aso), expresses concern for one of the other workers, Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi), who has been working on a disk for the company for the past week. Unable to get any answer from his apartment phone, she decides to check up on him. After arriving, she finds him in an otherwise normal state, asking him for the company’s work disk. While fumbling around his desk looking for, and eventually finding the much needed disk, she returns to thank Taguchi, only to find that he had hung himself in the meantime. Although shocked by this sudden tragedy, and discussing why he had done such an act with the other employees, Junco (Kurume Arisaka) and Yabe (Masatoshi Matsuo), work continues onward for the group and looking through the disk, they find what resembles a dark, indistinct picture of Taguchi’s apartment with a certain figure in the left corner. Later on, Yabe receives a mysterious phone call intoning “Help me, help me”. Puzzled by these mysterious messages and the abruptness of Taguchi’s death, he decides to investigate his apartment, finding something…
Parallel to this slow burning storyline is an equally slow and cautious story involving a young economics student named Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato). Although not exactly a computer literate person, he decides to join in on the fun of the intrawebs. Having trouble setting up the dial-up software (this was made in 2001, before broadband was widely available), he gets treated to various error messages and a series of abstract web cam movements, concluding with a message, “Do you want to meet a ghost?” Confused by this, Kawashima turns off the computer in a huff and expresses his thoughts about computers and the intrawebs in two simple words: “Stupid crap!” Whilst asleep, the computer turns itself back on and starts dialling up leading to the rather strange website again. Throwing the computer off the desk, he figures it’s time to ask an expert. Back at college, he decides to ask for help from the computer teacher, Haure (Koyuki) about this website.
As these two storylines develop, the tension unfolds with trepidation and the story keeps a snail’s pace, giving a clear signal to those who want a few quick shocks and something easy to digest. Kairo’s sense of horror and dread doesn’t shout in your face, it gets under your skin and stays there with no intention of leaving. Not to mention, it follows its own rules and will require repeat viewings to fully grasp the concept. Of course, I don’t want to give much away, since this is worth exploring for yourself and discovering its hidden depth. I could write a lot more about Kairo, but when writing movie reviews, there is always the case of OgMFgTehSpoielrs111! Anyways, this gets a full recommendation from me, surprising since I usually never bother with nu-horror.
Oh, and don’t even mention the remake.