Preview: Science on Screen at Coolidge Corner Theatre

Science on Screen: Pulse (Kairo) & Alan Lightman
Monday, October 29, 7:00pm
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, $9
(Tickets and more information)

Bostonist isn't sure what MIT physicist and novelist Alan Lightman has to do with Pulse, the 2001 Japanese horror masterpiece he will introduce tonight at the Coolidge Corner, but we are also not sure that it matters. We'll take any excuse to see this film.

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira), Pulse has a lot in common with other recent works of Japanese horror film -- known as J-horror -- a genre that includes movies like The Ring and Ju-on, which are more familiar to American audiences. (Pulse had an unsuccessful U.S. remake in 2006.)

Pulse is a movie about technological alienation. An otherworldly virus travels through the internet, causing puzzling suicides and disappearances across Tokyo. The dead turn up everywhere: in abandoned apartments, on the street, in video arcades, and, chillingly, on the internet itself.

Kurosawa gets compared to Tarkovsky and Kubrick, so watch for unusual angles and be prepared for the unexpected to take place in the background of the shot.

Still from Pulse taken from Coolidge Corner's event announcement.