Recap: Pulse, part one

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:26:22 GMT

I'd just like you all to know that my DVD of Pulse starts out with a trailer for Fanboys in which Kristen Bell tries to make up for any and all dorkiness in the trailer by wearing Parker Posey's hair. Level of success -- debatable, especially considering William Shatner's five seconds of screentime is still cooler than almost everything she's ever done.

PULSE

Part One

After a credits sequence intended to show us all that technology is bad and creepy and will probably smother us in our sleep while wearing a hockey mask slathered in clown makeup, we open on a crowd full of students, through which a frighteningly girlish young man walks. If his hair and lipstick are any indication, he's just returning home from performing at the local drag club as Jackie Kennedy following a carbon monoxide leak. He stares at the people he passes using cell phones and laptops in what looks to me like confusion. Well, really, why wouldn't he? That much blue filter in my life story and I'd start to wonder whether or not I'd really been raised by Smurfs.

Jackie O pauses, presumably because the creepy soundtrack tells him to, and looks behind him as if he's being watched. A figure in the rear view mirror of the bike he's just passed flickers and disappears.

He walks into a building and drops his stuff into a bin so that he can walk through a metal detector, during which we find out from the security guard's computer that his name is ... look, I don't care what it really is. I just paused my DVD player and his lipstick is darker than mine. He looks up at the guard's monitor and sees a shadow through the front door that isn't there when he turns to look at said door. The guard asks Jackie O if he's okay. Jackie O says he's fine, because who wouldn't be with such nicely styled bangs and what looks to be the beginnings of Farrah hair in the back?

Jackie O gets in the elevator to go down, sharing it with a guy who appears to share a birthday with dirt. Jackie O looks back at him as they ride and grimaces in a way that makes his neck expand like a bullfrog's.

When they arrive at their destination Old Guy makes his way slowly but confidently into what I'm guessing is the darkened basement of a college library. Apparently they spent so much on their crack security system they can't afford the electricity for the basement. Jackie O walks cautiously out into the basement, looking around and startling when the elevator doors suddenly squeak closed. Yes, you jumpy bastard, they do that.

Jackie O walks through the stacks, calling out for someone named Siegler. The Feedback Scratch Of Impending Idiot Devouring echoes on the soundtrack. Eh, it's probably best anyway. Between the lack of light and the blue filter, poor Jackie O looks like he'll drop dead of a wasting disease before anything gets the chance to tear him to pieces.

A shadow runs through the stacks, and Jackie O's perfectly styled bob promptly flips right the fuck out. He turns around suddenly and nearly runs right into Old Guy, knocking a bunch of books out of his hands. Jackie O bends over to pick up the books but when he stands Old Guy has gleefully (but slowly, natch) wandered off with his book cart, presumably in search of a movie that can afford a lighting budget.

Jackie O starts off through the stacks again -- and the books have mysteriously vanished, I should mention, quite possibly into a black hole of despair after being ignored by both this movie and the entire planet at large -- still calling for Siegler and glancing down at a flash drive in his hand. As he does, the one fluorescent light over his head starts to flicker ominously. Hey, if Wes Craven took away all my friends and starved me of electricity I'd probably expire from ennui, too.

In the flickering light the old guy's book cart rolls slowly towards Jackie O. Jackie O's hair (now seemingly a Dorothy Hammill, as Wes Craven randomly steers us through popular hairstyles of the late 20th century just for the hell of it) wets itself as a book falls off a shelf. Jackie O walks towards the fallen book in slow careful steps, the kind of steps taken by someone who burned away most of their brain cells applying their mascara. Jackie O calls for fucking Siegler again. You know where I would be right now if I were this guy? Somewhere in the middle of Mexico, still running away and screaming while flailing my arms like a Muppet. I never said I was a brave and stalwart knight, all right? That's why I'm watching this at four in the afternoon.

Jackie O continues to walk towards a gap in the books on a shelf while calling for Siegler. It is now four days later. I wonder where my life has gone. He peers in and after the appropriate amount of monster-waiting time, some pale-as-fuck thing with a wide-open mouth appears out of the whole and makes a grab for Jackie O. Jackie O's Jennifer-Aniston shag (dude, I don't even get it) stumbles backwards before faceplanting into the linoleum. My guess ... Jackie O, not a dance major.

The next thing we see clearly -- or sort of clearly, once we're done with the epileptic fits the flashing lights drive us to -- is the pale-as-fuck monster wrapping its long thin fingers around Jackie O's face, turning him towards its mouth, and sucking the life out of him. You know, there's a joke in that last bit about me still having the receipt for this DVD somewhere, but you probably already went there without me.

Cut to a party, or a bar, or ... I don't know, some gathering place full of college students where trendy music is playing and alcohol is being served but it's not some form of social suicide to continue playing your PS2. Dodging through the crowd is Kristen Bell, who plops her adorable tiny butt down at the bar next to Christina Milian (also known to my '80s-loving soul as that girl Amanda Peterson can feel free to beat the crap out of anytime she wants) and some jerkoff going on to his buddy about having all these passwords to kinky porn sites. What planet is he living on that he can't get free porn on the internet? Christina Milian gives him the, "What the buggering fuck have you been watching?" face, at which point Sir Porn denies he ever watched any of the porn, just that he has the passwords. Bitch, please. Even I would have watched the "granny trannies" porn, if only for the morbid entertainment value.

Sir Porn starts in on, "It's about having information," bitchcakes, and Kristen Bell pipes up with, "It's about having a girlfriend, (Sir Porn). You should check it out." Everybody 'ooo, burn!'s at that, although I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out how Sir Porn trying to make money off selling porn site passwords has anything to do with his having a girlfriend or not. If he had a real kinky girlfriend with a marketing major, that might actually be a good thing. (Okay, okay, she's talking to the other guy, in which case I still kinda want to punch her in the face a little.) Kristen Bell apologizes, saying she's a shrink in training -- sweetie, you're my height, any more shrunk and you'd be a Borrower -- and she has to tell it like it is.

She notices she's gotten a message on her phone and checks it to find a request from a Tim for a dance. She looks over at the dork Sir Porn was trying to unload porn passwords onto and says, "Tim! I'm right here." He laughs all, "Bwuh?" Clearly, he's a conversational mastermind. Christina Milian passes Kristen Bell her phone to show her a picture of some hot shirtless guy who might possibly be naked considering the prompt to scroll down -- like I care to check -- and Sir Porn and his squire respond by looking at the picture and pronouncing, "Gay!" Dear straight males -- must you always say that shit as if you're ecstatic it means we're stuck with you as our only options? I'm just curious.

Sir Porn tells Christina Milian that it's a boy toy who saw her name was Izzie and thought she was a guy. Okay, a.) I thought every character in Hollywood named Izzie was supposed to be played by Katherine Heigl anymore, and b.) how many male Izzies are there these days? Aren't they almost extinct, like dodo birds and the Ramones? Kristen Bell's phone buzzes again, which she yells at Squire Tim for and which he denies being the cause of. It turns out it's her mom, which leads to her making a lame attempt at a bitchface. Christina Milian asks what's up, to which Kristen Bell says she thought Jackie O would call. Well, not unless that monster-thing swallowed a cell phone first.

She claims he's been avoiding her for a week -- easy to do when you're passing through an evil creature's colon, I'm guessing -- and that their relationship has been reduced to text-messaging. Hey, shut up, I've got an entire social life based around various forms of text-messaging! Christina Milian pretty much tells her to let it go and give up on the poor schmuck. Kristen Bell (and I'm sorry, but from now on she's Veronica because it's easier to type out and it's what we're all thinking anyway) sits there all pissy and mopey while Christina Milian (now McCindy ... again, just 'cause) tells her that Jackie O's a dumbass who's too stupid to realize that Veronica's a hotass. Uh, considering the hair and makeup issues I don't think that's his problem. Sir Porn, McCindy and Squire Tim try to badger Veronica into dancing, which she claims is not a pretty sight to behold.

Cut to Veronica leaving and walking off alone in the dead of night (hey, let's play Find The Pun!) and spotting some creepy shadow in an alleyway. She's all ready to just walk off when Squire Tim pops up out of nowhere and scares the crap out of her. Well, if he doesn't have a girlfriend, it's probably because he should stop doing that to girls.

Squire Tim gives her some bullshit story about wanting to go home and walk with her even though his house is the other way, but she shrugs him off and bounds off on her merry way. After all, she's perfectly safe! Who would bother a pretty young woman walking alone through a city in the middle of the night? The cameraman will hold them off!

Back home, Veronica dumps her stuff and raids her fridge while checking her messages. The first is her mom, giving her about the least amount of information I've ever heard a mother give her daughter in a phone message, and the second is from Jackie O. "Hey, this is (Jackie O) ... never mind. *click*" Veronica proceeds to go out on her porch and call Jackie O to ask, "What's up with the weird message?" Weird message? Hi, Veronica, and welcome to the wonderful world of boys! Perhaps if there were bumfights involved it might seem less weird? I think the word you're looking for is "vague," Princess, not "weird."

Back at Jackie O's place, he's not home, but the Feedback Scratch of Devoured Off-Again Boyfriends is eating his Cheetos and watching his porn. Which he's allowed to have custody of this week since he and Veronica aren't fucking, I'm guessing.

Veronica lies down in bed. Veronica does her homework at two in the morning. Veronica bores me to tears before bounding off to check and see if McCindy's come home. For the record, she hasn't, because she's too busy sleeping next to the kind of one-night mistake you make when you've had enough to drink to think the hottie texting you his picture actually looks like that. She wakes up to a text from Veronica to get her sorry dork-banging ass home, and deletes her profile from the dork's computer before she leaves. Heh.

Cut to the next day -- Good morning! Here, have a hot cup of coffee and a stellar view of Kristen Bell's toned abdominal area! -- as Veronica goes through her usual morning routine. You know, applying makeup, doing her hair, emasculating the local law enforcement. Veronica stomps into McCindy's room to wake her up at an ungodly hour and beat her awake with her discarded clothes from the previous night. She's lucky she doesn't try that shit with me. I've dismembered people for waking me from naps, for crying out loud. (They're naps. Come on, I'd give up losing my virginity for a good long uninterrupted nap. Maybe.)

And it's off to class, where Veronica is learning about stalking. Jeez, it's too bad she's not actually playing Veronica Mars in this movie. She could teach this class blindfolded and handcuffed, maybe tossed screaming into a broken fridge ... oh, sorry, right, the movie. The professor is interrupted when McCindy tries to sneak in late, smiling sheepishly and wearing a baseball cap. Wait, I'm sorry, is that what college students are doing nowadays when they oversleep for an eight a.m. class? 'Cause my professors were lucky I remembered to put on pants. McCindy heads up to a seat near Veronica, who almost immediately receives a text from McCindy -- even though McCindy's lugging books and a Starbucks cup in her hands, so neat trick, that -- telling Veronica to wake her when the professor's done.

After class McCindy tries to persuade Veronica to go get wasted at a party with her (probably right then and there, considering her track record so far) as Sir Porn sits on the steps nearby talking on his cell phone. Sir Porn hangs up on whoever the hell he was talking to tell the girls they look good before offering them bootleg copies of a string of CDs or DVDs. McCindy bitches that he should just save the tax dollars and drive himself to jail. As someone who works in a CD factory yet can't afford to actually buy the CDs most of the time, I feel free in my opinion that McCindy can shut the McHell up. Sir Porn points out that she's coming with him if he does because she did buy stuff off him, and also mentions that Jackie O fucked with his phone so it doesn't count for half as many minutes. Then he wanders off in the midst of Dread Cell Phone Usage while McCindy goes to lunch and Veronica hangs back to be mopey and solitary.

Sometime later -- in the week, in the month, in the century, who knows? -- Veronica emerges from the subway in an entirely different outfit and enters an apartment building that ... okay, you know those movies in the eighties about How Bad Things Have Gotten Since The Good Old Days? And they used to show some bright shining new architecturally impressive apartment building from the fifties before fading to the decrepit modern-day version full of bulletholes and covered in dirty diapers with gang members throwing burning kittens off the roof? This is that building. And again, no one's paid the electrical bill. Anyway, in she goes, and after fetching the spare key from above the doorjamb, cementing Jackie O's expulsion from Mensa, in she goes into there, too.

And welcome to Jackie O's apartment, quite possibly the most depressing apartment in the world that I'm not living in. Veronica finds a computer running through a program or something, like BASIC on speed. (What? I can find porn with my computer. Don't ask me how to run it.) Veronica goes into the kitchen and spots a cockroach running along the counter. She's distracted from the thought that she's never eating at Jackie O's house again with what sounds like a gurgling sound coming from somewhere. After checking the fridge, she finds maggots the size of my forearm wriggling happily. She curses and slams the door shut, which involves slightly less yelping and projectile vomiting than I would have done.

Jackie O suddenly appears out of nowhere looking like death warmed over, or possibly more aptly death defrosted and melting out of your freezer. Veronica promptly rips into him for not keeping in touch with anyone. She notices a black spot on the back of his neck as he winds a rope around his wrist. "Stay here," he says, although I have to rewind it three times to figure that out since it sounds like he's been swilling novocaine, and he wanders off into another room. You know, maybe it's a good thing he's antisocial right now. Just putting that out there.

Veronica hears a yowling sound and checks the closet, only to find what I'm guessing is Jackie O's cat looking half-digested and gross. Uh, ew. Either that thing's dying or it's taken to swimming in pudding. There's a commotion in the bedroom, and Veronica enters to find Josh hanging from the ceiling. Man, this is going to be the hardest apartment to get new tenants for. Especially if they leave everything like it is.

Cut to Veronica being brought home to McCindy in a squad car. Inside her apartment, Veronica calls her mom and leaves a "something bad happened" message in their neverending round of phone tag, all while making teary-eyed swipes at the slathered-on inch-deep layer of charcoal on her eyelids. Veronica bursts into tears before slamming into visions of her and Jackie O going at it like bunny rabbits -- thanks, movie, I mean that -- interspersed with shots of the moon and a stairwell and whatever else the writer came up with after his first creative writing class. And then in her mind she's walking around his apartment and Jackie O's blabbing on her head about not being there anymore and ... look, whatever, the symbology is about puddle-deep, smells like ass, feels like something ishy you step in, and now all I want to do is exfoliate my soles.

And it's time for therapy! Veronica's therapist is none other than Ron Rifkin, who even I think of as Sloane on Alias even though I thought the show was just a mangled excuse for Jennifer Garner to punch people in the face every week. Not that she needed one. TheraSloane tells Veronica that it's okay to cry. Why does everybody always have to say shit like that when people die? I really want someone to say that to me the next time someone dies and I'm sitting there nervously grinning like an idiot, if only so I can look them straight in the eye and say with all of the gentleness I can manage, "No, really?!" Veronica says she has, which TheraSloane appears to think is a crock. Veronica gathers up her stuff to stomp off and snots something about him wasting her time, to which he claims, "You're angry!" Veronica snaps that she's just late for class, to which TheraSloane says that she loved Jackie O and thinks that she caused him to hang himself and pretty much badgers her into bursting into tears. Fabulous.

Okay, let me just boil down the rest of this scene if only to save me from having to suffer through the kind of bullshit Hollywood psych analysis that comes from screenwriters accidentally catching five minutes of Dr. Phil. Veronica says she should have seen the signs and that she's not a suicide risk, and TheraSloane says Jackie O was lonely and psych students can't self-analyze. And then there's karaoke! Well, okay, there should be, if only to prove that yes, there is a way in which this scene could become more painful to watch.

McCindy waits outside as Veronica exits, and the two of them head out past some guy scrubbing mud off a wall. I'd wonder if that's important. That'd be a first.

Back home, McCindy, Sir Porn, and Squire Tim are all at their respective computers in a chat room with Veronica trying to make me feel better. 'Cause nothing says, "We care deeply about your mental well-being," like emoticons. As Squire Tim is attempting the ill-advised A Trip To Starbucks Solves All! manuever, "(Jackie O)" suddenly appears in the chat room repeatedly saying, "help me." Jesus, you've already escaped from the movie. How much more help do you want?

We cut to ... oh, my God, human interaction?! Something really horrible must have happened. Squire Tim says "(Jackie O)" was probably a virus. That's one lameass virus. Sir Porn starts going on about how viruses say really important shit and generally making an ass out of himself, and they all decide that one of them has to go over there and log Jackie O's computer off. Wait, no one turned the computer off? Did they leave it there so the gross dying cat would have something to play Minesweeper on? Everybody just kind of stares at one another. At this point in the conversation my friends would all have started saying, "I call not going!," usually before me. Bastards, the lot of them.

We cut to Sir Porn arriving at The Apartment Building of Spraypainted Nostalgia and crawling into Jackie O's apartment through the transom over the door. Unsurprisingly, the computer's not there. What exactly did they expect? "Take the body, the cat, the maggots, the cockroach, but for God's sake don't log him out of Yahoo IM! He may get email!" Sir Porn checks the rest of the apartment, freaking right the fuck out over the flimsy little shoelace that's left behind after they cut down Jackie O, and shoves open the door to the other bedroom. Hello, and welcome to crackpot central, where the walls are painted black, the windows are covered with red tape, and absolutely none of this is a metaphor.

Sir Porn checks out the bathroom, which makes my bathroom look like a Scrubbin' Bubbles commercial in comparison. He walks back out again, just in time to spot some pale chick in a black dress casually walking slowly out of the shadows towards him with a creepy flicker or two. Quick, Sir Porn, what the hell were you watching seven days ago? And was Naomi Watts scaring small children in it? Sir Porn promptly loses his shit, rips a hole in the red tape on the windows (er, because?) and dives under the bed. Okay, maybe I knighted him a little too hastily. The creepy pale chick peers over the bed, causing Sir Porn to scream in a way he probably wouldn't have ever had to resort to if he'd ever known the touch of a woman. Ahem.

Off in the cafeteria, Veronica is going on about how Jackie O wasn't acting like himself that last day. Well, gee, I hope not, if his idea of greeting houseguests was starving a cat and walking into his bedroom to hang himself. Veronica and McCindy blather on about not seeing it coming and why did he do it and zzzzzzzz. This Afterschool Special sucks. When can we get to the one where the four girls on the swim team get hooked on cocaine and Destroy Their Beautiful Lives in four different ways? Like Choose Your Own Adventure books, but with dimebags. McCindy asks if Veronica's still getting messages from Jackie O, which she is. Also, nobody's seen Sir Porn lately.

Well, of course not, because as we see in the next scene Sir Porn is too busy staring blankly into space and not moving. I recognize that blank look from when my internet goes down. The phone rings and after five million years Sir Porn deigns to answer it. "Hey, (McCindy)," he says, even though it's Veronica. Oh, no, he can't read caller ID?! He must be possessed. Or stupid. Or stoned. Veronica asks if he's gotten off his ass and gone over to Jackie O's to turn off his computer. Twenty minutes of silence later, Sir Porn says he's just been feeling kind of down lately. When Veronica expresses sympathy, he hangs up on her. HEE. Afterwards he checks his wrist, on which the same black crap that was on Jackie O's neck is growing, and bursts in embarrassing sobs. Dude, shut up, you'd have to pay a hundred bucks for that tattoo anywhere else.

Cut to Veronica arriving at the Apartment Building of Spraypainted Nostalgia. I haven't mentioned it before but every time one of these morons shows up here they pause to stare up at its spooky exterior with grim barely restrained terror as if they're thinking, "Jesus H. Christ, I'm going to end up living here in a few years with career choices like this, aren't I? In that one right there on the seventh floor, the one with a sticker of Calvin pissing on Winnie The Pooh glued to the window. Aw, poor Pooh." And hey, look, there's a "For Rent" sign up!

Veronica arrives at the front door of Jackie O's apartment, where mounds of garbage bags presumably full of his crap are piled high in the hallway. And yet we're still going to live under the delusion that Jackie O's computer is still inside, running under its own power sending out mysterious messages and continuing to download torrents of My So-Called Life. Ooo-kay, then.

Veronica reaches for the doorknob, only for a large black woman carrying a fan (the cooling appliance, not Spike Lee wearing a Knicks jersey) to open the door. Oh, this can't be Jackie O's apartment. It's lit, the walls are white, and I could swear I smell Pine Sol rather than the dumpster behind a butcher shop. The lady asks if Veronica's here to see the apartment. Well, parts of it. You know, the parts not covered in dead things. Veronica just gapes at the place in shock and asks where the hell Jackie O's computer went to. After being threatened with a call to the police, Bitchy Landlady finally admits she sold it to pay for Jackie O's back rent, then mutters about dead cats and ginormous cockroaches and lame plotlines as she stomps off to get the name of the guy who bought it.

Cut to the outside of some rundown warehouse where Ian Somerhalder is halfway down the gullet of some crappy car, looking incredibly scummy for someone whose most famous job involved playing a castaway on a not-all-that-deserted island. Veronica stalks up to him and slams down a bounced check, proclaiming him to be, "Dexter McCarthy." I wonder why that sounds like a serial-killing puppet to me. I also wonder who's going to write that fanfic, 'cause I'm sure as hell skipping out on that one. Unwashed Boone asks about the whole bouncing-check issue, and Veronica snottily tells him it doesn't matter since he bought a stolen computer before asking him why he's emailing her. Unwashed Boone rather aptly points out that he doesn't know who she is as he wasn't introduced in this stupid movie until about five seconds ago. She may have been confused because the stench is familiar. No, sweetie, that was the dead cat, but nice try.

Veronica starts going off on a rant about him buying the computer and getting the password and fucking with the people in the address book, to which Unwashed Boone pops the trunk on that thing that's passing for his car to reveal the computer still sitting there. My immediate reaction would have been to ask him if he really thought I wouldn't believe he hadn't already hooked it up, but then again I once connected my desktop on the floor of my grandmother's spare bedroom and squished in between the bed and the wall to use it. Mayhaps Veronica doesn't know from that sort of twitchy computer-deprived desperation, because she buys in. Unwashed Boone offers to give it back but before leaving Veronica makes yet another bitchy comment about how, oh, woe, Jackie O is dead and doesn't need to surf the web anymore. (I'd feel more sympathy for her but, really, why can't this be more like an Afterschool Special? Jackie O can hang himself, and everybody can sit around talking about how They Should Have Seen It Coming, and then Veronica and McCindy can go fly a kite together and the world will be at ease. You know, until next week's episode when Veronica develops an eating disorder that threatens the life of her secret prom baby. *sigh* I miss Afterschool Specials. Can you tell?)

Later, Unwashed Boone hooks up the computer. We get a good thirty seconds or so of Plugging! Shit! In! ACTION before Unwashed Boone settles in with a beer and a cigarette to ... hell, I don't know. I doubt it's to trade BPAL imps. The screen lights up before the words "Do you want to meet a ghost?" pop up. The image then changes into some black-and-white video of a girl with long dark hair passing by the screen. And then it cuts to some guy with black pantyhose pulled over his head and dark writing on the wall. And then to a guy with his head on his computer desk, and then to a guy blowing his brains out, which makes Unwashed Boone flip and turn the computer off.

(For the record, I had to stop watching this part at ten at night and restart the movie at ten in the morning. Again, I never said I wasn't a pussy. I freak out when stickers touch my bare skin, all right? "Pathetic wuss" would have been my middle name if my parents had been meaner.)

Next up: If the DVD menu is any indication, Veronica curls up in the bathtub and cries like a baby. There's a joke about Jason Dohring's dick here and I just can't seem to make it.

wasted and sarcastic in the cheap seats

Recap: Pulse, part one

So since I'm both procrastinating and feeling guilty ...