9. Pulse (2001)
A rash of Japanese University students are committing suicide. It is connected to sinister goings on with the internet. Close friends and family of the dead students begin to die or just fade away. This quickly depopulates not just a busy Japanese city - but all the whole world. The few survivors left pass their time quietly in a ghost dominated post apocalyptic city. A couple of survivors twig on to the fact that the phenomenon was started by someone researching the afterlife online and they must race against time to stop the horror whilst battling with their own wills to live in an increasingly ghost haunted world. Pulse is eminently watchable and scary. It is yet another J Horror that is more of a ghost story - in the mode of Ringu, Ju on, Dark Water - and does not need splatter to carry it off. Compare it to the excellent but insanely gory Tokyo Gore Police, and you will find it a million miles away from that film's ethos. Everything in Pulse is restrained and measured. The horror - from a bunch of students killing themselves and finally ending in global apocalypse - is skilfully handled. The sorry fact of the high teenage suicide rate in Japan is touched upon, in addition to the disconnection of Japanese society - the alienation and loneliness of many people and how they reach out to the internet to try and make a connection. Having been made in 2001, a lot of the technology of the film seems a little dated but that should not deter the viewer from enjoying a solid J Horror effort from Kiyoshi Kurosawa.