Kiyoshi Kurosawa – Kairo AKA Pulse (2001)

~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide wrote:
Kiyoshi Kurosawa grabbed worldwide attention with his 1997 masterpiece Cure, a horror film that was actually horrifying. Sandblasting away all the campy cliches of 1970s quickies, Cure employed intelligent camera work, lighting, sound design, and a good story — and very little special effects — to prove that horror flicks can also be art. Kurosawa shows that he has lost none of his abilities to scare in this film. The first 30 minutes of Kairo is perhaps some of the most unnerving, frightening sequences to come down the pike in a long time. And Kurosawa accomplishes this with admirable economy, using little dramatizing music or flash camera trickery. Computers, cell phones, and other forms of technology play a central role in this film. Unlike in some tech horror flicks, technology in this film is not an evil in itself. Rather the horror of Kairo comes from how this technology separates and divides humanity from itself. Photographed in browns and icy whites, Tokyo is portrayed as a city of lost and lonely souls bracing itself for impending doom. As the film progresses, it shifts gears from a straight-up horror flick into something weirder and more existential — as if Andrei Tarkovsky directed The Omega Man. Some might be put off by the change, while others will be dazzled by such an audacious move. Overall, Kairo is an astonishing work that cements Kiyoshi Kurosawa has one of the masters of the media.

Kairo.2001.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 59 min
Size: 	4.04 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x552 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 842 kb/s
BPP: 	0.283
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s (Original Stereo Mix / Arrrow GBR Blu-ray (2017))
#2:  	Japanese 5.1ch AC-3 @ 640 kb/s (Surround Upmix / Umbrella Entertainment AUS Blu-ray (2024))
#3:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 98.0 kb/s (Commentary by critic and writer Alexandra Heller-Nicholas / Umbrella Entertainment AUS Blu-ray (2024))

https://nitro.download/view/E30E6A96AEF8A35/Kairo.2001.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, French, German, Italian, Chinese