Pulse- In Horror, Nothing Really Happens

So… yeah, Pulse was nice. Or at least, it was nice in the beginning. Somewhere after the first 30 minutes or so it just lost its mark, and what followed was a mediocre film. The acting level went down, the dialogues became clanky, the metaphors became way too much for a normal movie. I left the screen disappointed, way too much disappointed.

In short, though, this movie is a metaphor for the way that the internet changed our society, driving us away from each other due to the internet. It is pretty easy to see that by the time we reach the end, the director practically says that the internet will destroy us all in one way or the other. But the ending just feels a little bit over-the-top, and is a little too happy for the tone of the movie up to this point.

But it doesn't mean that there's nothing to learn from this movie. True, it is located in the first 30 minutes of the movie, but this lesson is there nonetheless. In the first 30 minutes of the film, almost nothing happens. And that's one of the most important secrets in the horror genre- nothing really happens, but it is still scary as hell.

The trick for doing it is to say to us quite early that this is a horror movie or game. After stressing that, we're always on the lookout for those horror moments, because we first of all wanna be scared, and second of all we wanna be brave. This combination makes us far more stressful and jumpy in horror films and games.

A great GM can utilize that. After stressing that his is a horror game, and giving something to chew early on, it is only a matter of raising questions in most of the time left for the session. How to do that is what all those other horror posts are for. But firstly one needs to understand that in horror, being gentle and graceful in the use of the tools is the trick. Nothing really happens, or is it? The room is empty, or is it? There are marks on the floor, but do you really wanna know what thing left those marks? Nothing really happened here, but the feeling went out of my keyboard and (hopefully) entered your minds. Because in horror, just like in real life, nothing really happens. We just think that it does. And hope that we are wrong.

How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what have you learned from it?