'PULSE' SMARTENS UP HORROR.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

OF ALL THE horror movies coming out of Japan in recent years, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films seem to be the only ones with any real thought in them.

Naturally, this makes them less exportable - and less attractive to Hollywood remakers - than sheer dumb terror works like ``The Ring'' and ``The Grudge.'' But one Kurosawa film that is getting an American version is his 2001 ``Pulse.'' Call me pessimistic, but I expect that when we see this sorrowful, profound parable of loneliness in the modern world in English, the experience will prove at least half empty.

The real deal is finally getting its release on this continent, and for that we can be grateful. Not so much scary as disturbing to the core, ``Pulse'' patiently, inexorably forces us to contemplate the void of existence, while ghosts fade in and out of the frames and unsettling electronic chatter skitters along the soundtrack.

There are devices we've seen before in horror films - communication technologies with maddening minds of their own, demon women having eternal bad-hair days - but the other guys don't have a clue how to make them speak to nagging, everyday fears. That's all Kurosawa is interested in. ``Pulse'' suggests how frightening it can be when even the tentative connections we unconsciously depend on go offline in utterly inexplicable ways.

When a co-worker commits suicide, his young friends at a rooftop plant nursery are puzzled by a computer disk he leaves behind - his spirit appears to have survived, to some degree, in the program. Further investigation leads to ghostly encounters, and the living who have them enter frantic or zomboid states before vanishing, leaving nothing but a stained wall behind them.

In a concurrent story line, computer-illiterate Ryosuke (Haruhiko Kato) is disturbed by strange messages on his desktop monitor. He seeks out university cyber-whiz Harue (Koyuki), who's doing some kind of research into supernatural occurrences on the Internet. As their investigation builds, a needy relationship develops between the slacker dude and the brainy lady. It's not exactly love, but since the population of Tokyo disappears around them at an alarming rate, it might well be more urgent.

``Just right now, forever - is that what being a ghost is about?'' Harue wonders as the specter of eternal isolation grows ever more threatening. Although Kurosawa does everything in slow, often mundane takes, by the time Ryosuke hooks up with Michi (Kumiko Aso), the last of the nursery girls, the sense of desperation and loss is more intense than most graphic monster movies.

Kurosawa, whose other works include the immensely creepy ``Cure,'' ``Charisma'' and ``Bright Future,'' brings a true philosopher's existential eye and a born dramatist's emotional integrity to a much-degraded genre. He not only gives J-horror a pulse, but brains and soul as well.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

PULSE - Three and one half stars

(Not rated: scary situations)

Starring: Haruhiko Kato, Kumiko Aso, Koyuki.

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Running time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Playing: Landmark's Nuart, West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Suicides, disappearances and strange visitations from the dead haunt an increasingly depopulated Tokyo in this bracingly intellectual horror film. In Japanese with English subtitles.

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Photo:

Haruhiko Kato, left, and Koyuki are bound together by the cybernetic and the supernatural in ``Pulse.''