What is real?

 This post is a review of the film Pulse (2001) or Kairo. I apologize in advance for my terrible writing, I swear I'll try.

Well, the film tells the story of several groups of people who are disappearing, not only in Tokyo but throughout Japan. In a way, the film is comforting. It doesn't have strong colors and doesn't try to overuse music. On the contrary, the sound of the film is entirely respectful of something to make you feel like you're not alone, even in many ambient sounds where voices, cars, and horns appear. Upon closer inspection, there is no one there, only the sound of a possible existence that was once caused there. The film takes place in 2001, meaning it has a great appeal to the new technologies that were emerging at that time, such as the desktop computer and the internet. I know these have been around for some time, but they became popular in the late 90s to the early 00s. As I mentioned earlier, the film is comforting, both for its sounds, such as keyboard clicks, beeps, and signal, line, and frequency sounds - something similar to what is in the anime Lain. While watching it, I couldn't help but think of Lain and how connected everything was. Speaking of which, the film discusses how connected we are to others but at the same time, we are alone, and this is one of the messages of the film. Despite being a horror film, it doesn't rely on jump scares and monsters running towards you. It's a horror that makes you think, "what is this?" "what's happening?" It also gives you some surrealistic visions, making you think about what's real and what's not. But as the title suggests, what is real? What is fake? What is alive or dead? Aren't Kawashima and Kudo ghosts of the present world? Is death the end, or just an escape to another beginning?