Pulse

PULSE
SYNOPSIS

Josh enters a dark university library intending to meet Douglas Ziegler. There he is attacked by a humanoid spirit that sucks the will to live out of him. Some days later, Josh's girlfriend, Mattie visits his apartment and finds him looking pale shortly before he commits suicide by hanging himself with an ethernet cable.

Mattie and her friends begin to receive online messages from Josh asking for help but assume that Josh's computer is still on and that a virus is creating the messages. Mattie learns that Josh's computer has been sold to Dexter McCarthy (Dex), who finds a number of strange videos on the computer.

Mattie receives a package that Josh mailed two days before he died. Inside are rolls of red tape and a message telling her that the tape keeps "them" out, although he doesn't know why. Later, Dex visits Mattie and shows her video messages Josh was sending to Ziegler. Josh had hacked Ziegler's computer system, stolen and then distributed a virus. This virus had unlocked a portal that connected the realm of the living to the realm of the dead. Josh believed he had coded a counter to the virus and wanted to meet Ziegler at the library. Josh's counter-program is found on a memory stick taped inside the PC case with red tape.

Dex and Mattie visit Zieglar and find his room entirely plastered in red tape. Ziegler tells them of a project he worked on where he found "frequencies no one knew existed." Opening these frequencies somehow allowed the spirits to travel to the world of the living. Ziegler also tells them that that these spirits "take away your will to live" and where to find the main server infected with the virus.

Dex and Mattie find the server and upload Josh's fix, causing the system to crash and the spirits to vanish. Moments later, however, the system reboots and the spirits return leaving Mattie and Dexter with no option but to flee the city by car. Over the car radio, Mattie and Dex hear a radio report from the Army announcing the location of several "safe zones" where there are no Internet connections, cell phones, or televisions. As Dex and Mattie drive to a safe zone, the film concludes with a voice-over from Mattie saying "We can never go back. The cities are theirs. Our lives are different now. What was meant to connect us to one another, instead connected us to forces that we could have never imagined. The world we knew is gone, but the will to live never dies. Not for us, and not for them." and clips of abandoned cities, including a window of an apartment with Josh looking through it.

PULSE
CAPTURES


PULSE
THRILLER