Ray Pride

(Kairo) Although Miramax sat on this one for almost half a decade, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 horror opus is one of the most dread-steeped, agonizing horrors of the past ten years. (Remake rights were supposedly the reason for the Weinsteins to hold back.) The 50-year-old mood master's output of twenty-three features includes three readily available gems including 1997's compelling "Cure"; "Charisma" (1999), which posits the fate of a tree that may be evil or may be good as the repository of the world's fate; and "Séance" (2000). Many of his movies star one of my favorite actors, the great everyman Kôji Yakusho, and he's on hand here, too. Some of the tech specs are dated in this Tokyo-set tale of a website that invites its visitors to meet with ghosts, leading to the contagion of an Internet virus. But the sense of isolation and depression among its characters and the richness of Kurosawa's dreamlike suggestiveness should leave you cold to the bone. What's just outside the frame in a Kurosawa picture? The imagination. Shot, like most of Kurosawa's work, by Junichiro Hayashi. 118m.

"Pulse" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2005-11-29)

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