When we say that a movie is "bad", we should to be more specific; I can think of at least five different kinds of bad movies.
1) Bad movies with One Obvious Flaw (often the ending, sometimes the casting of a major player) which ruins everything else, but the filmmakers seem oblivious to this. See: I Am Legend, whose epilogue tosses the source material's darkly ironic twist into the dumpster.
2) Bad movies of the "slick Hollywood blockbuster" variety. Competent cast, fine cinematography, the whole thing shallow and toothless: a neatly wrapped package with garbage inside. See: The Haunting remake.
3) My favorites: unintentionally hilarious bad movies. See: The Wicker Man remake.
4) "Lowest common denominator" bad movies - sex comedies, torture porn, sentimental maudlin. The cinematic equivalent of stepping into canine feces. See: Hostel.
5) And, finally, bad movies like Pulse - so aggressively worthless they don't give critics much to chew on. They are not funny, but tedious; you can't list plot holes, because there isn't a plot and there isn't a story; everything is so useless, the only possible reaction is an incredulous shrug.
The subtext here is actually interesting, if not too subtle: technology surrounds us (internet, cell phones...), and yet it isolates us, sapping our vital energies, like the ghost-like entities haunting the protagonists.
Or the movie itself, I guess.
Pulse is shot in washed out grays and blues; the purpose is creating a creepy atmosphere, the result is an ugly-looking film where everything has a cadaverous hue. It's a movie which features a twenty-five years old Kristen Bell taking a hot bath and manages to make it look boring, for crying out loud.
Actors don't really matter here. Laurence Olivier couldn't have done much better; a beginning drama student couldn't have done much worse. Characters don't have any depth or personality - they're rats in a maze, although without the frantic quality of the rodents.
3/10
1) Bad movies with One Obvious Flaw (often the ending, sometimes the casting of a major player) which ruins everything else, but the filmmakers seem oblivious to this. See: I Am Legend, whose epilogue tosses the source material's darkly ironic twist into the dumpster.
2) Bad movies of the "slick Hollywood blockbuster" variety. Competent cast, fine cinematography, the whole thing shallow and toothless: a neatly wrapped package with garbage inside. See: The Haunting remake.
3) My favorites: unintentionally hilarious bad movies. See: The Wicker Man remake.
4) "Lowest common denominator" bad movies - sex comedies, torture porn, sentimental maudlin. The cinematic equivalent of stepping into canine feces. See: Hostel.
5) And, finally, bad movies like Pulse - so aggressively worthless they don't give critics much to chew on. They are not funny, but tedious; you can't list plot holes, because there isn't a plot and there isn't a story; everything is so useless, the only possible reaction is an incredulous shrug.
The subtext here is actually interesting, if not too subtle: technology surrounds us (internet, cell phones...), and yet it isolates us, sapping our vital energies, like the ghost-like entities haunting the protagonists.
Or the movie itself, I guess.
Pulse is shot in washed out grays and blues; the purpose is creating a creepy atmosphere, the result is an ugly-looking film where everything has a cadaverous hue. It's a movie which features a twenty-five years old Kristen Bell taking a hot bath and manages to make it look boring, for crying out loud.
Actors don't really matter here. Laurence Olivier couldn't have done much better; a beginning drama student couldn't have done much worse. Characters don't have any depth or personality - they're rats in a maze, although without the frantic quality of the rodents.
3/10