Showmax’s ‘Pulse’: An appropriately unhinged review of what went wrong

REVIEW

JOHANNESBURG – In June, Showmax took a stab at long-form horror with the release of its new original series Pulse, a show that attempts to conflate real-life fears with survival horror through the premise of a game, the aptly titled Pulse, that becomes real (I guess?) at a game development company in Johannesburg.

According to the homegrown streaming giant, Pulse follows how “a group of game creators discover that survival is no longer just a game when an electromagnetic pulse bomb fries every electrical circuit in their office high-rise – and people’s heads”.

The show is directed by Salmon de Jager and stars Thapelo Mokoena, Carel Nel, Tarryn Wyngaard and Sven Ruygrok.

When I sat down to watch it I was both excited and apprehensive – excited because I don’t know anyone who has as an intense love for horror as I do and apprehensive because I don’t know anyone who has an intense love for horror as I do.

This is a juggle between these two emotions is what stresses me the most about starting new horror TV shows because for every American Horror Story: Asylum we will undoubtedly have to go through a number of American Horror Story: Cults.

Horror is one of the most difficult genres in entertainment to translate from film to television because, admittedly, it can be difficult to maintain the required tension, interest and body count to a much longer format.

Perhaps this is why some of the greatest horror TV shows – such as Slasher, AHS, Channel Zero, and The Haunting – are anthologies because each season can focus on a singular story on a much more concise level.

Personally, the only two I can think of that are not anthological but whose quality doesn’t falter as their seasons progress are What We Do in the Shadows and Ash vs Evil Dead. Also, I have not gotten into Stranger Things nearly enough to have an opinion on it that I can stand behind.

So, I set my expectations low, my hopes decent, turned on Showmax and had a good chuckle.

Though I’m mostly kidding, Pulse is perhaps one of the worst horror television shows I have ever seen and I have seen some truly awful things in my life.

It almost has that kind of early-2000s campy appeal to it but it isn’t nearly interesting or ridiculous enough for me to give it a pass – which is saying something because I am a stern advocate for early-2000s cheesy horror goodness.

For a premise like Pulse to work in a campy way, it either needed to go overly ridiculous or overly serious: I’m talking melodrama, bonkers concept executions, terrible writing, ludicrous storylines, bizarre choices. Think, Malignant (2021) – a movie whose concept and execution managed to be the wildest thing I’ve seen in horror in a while but whose purposeful campy nature worked in making it one of the year’s most evocative releases.

Instead, all Pulse delivered was disappointment after disappointment, confirming my most foreseeable gripe being that I’ve seen all this before. For me, Pulse makes me think of what something would be like if The Belko Experiment (2017), Escape Room (2019), Stay Alive (2006) and Resident Evil (2002) were haphazardly thrown into a blender and called a show.

That would be fine if the series didn’t frustrate me with some of the confusing at best, but suspicious at worst, decisions that were made in both its creation and its execution.

So as not to not spoil anything, let’s go through a quick list of WTFs, shall we?

DIVERSITY? I HARDLY KNOW HER

Let’s start with whatever is happening with the casting. Despite this being a South African production, it bares very little resemblance to South Africa. No, this is not saying that I wanted a “uniquely South African” story, but there is not a single black female lead in this whole production and there is only one black male lead. Instead, we have a smorgasbord of white and white-adjacent actors in the forefront with a sprinkle of colour, here and there.

This is not to say that every South African production needs to have the greatest racial diversity anyone has ever seen, but even down to language, this is a mess.

Not one person has a uniform English accent. Not a single person seems to know that they’re meant to be acting as South Africans despite being South Africans. Almost every name is generically European. Despite taking place in one of the most diverse cities in the country linguistically, the only language other than English that is given any sort of decent screentime is French. The fact that the director is white makes this sus as hell.

GRAPHIC DESIGN IS NOT YOUR PASSION

Honestly, what’s happening with those graphics, bestie? Listen, I am well aware that some of the decisions made here could be linked to the show trying to mimic the graphics and set designs of the type of game it wants us to harken it to, but this is no excuse for some of the choices made.

There are moments where the show switches between gameplay-like graphics and “real life” but this is done so inconsistently (and honestly, unnecessarily) that I will not hear anything about why the CGI for some of its other effects look straight from someone using the free version of Picstart to edit in postproduction.

I don’t know if all of the budget went into securing Mokoena, but I do know that, in the wise words of legendary drag queen Tatiana, “we all make choices, but that was a choice”.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, INTO THE TRASH

Let’s talk about how it handled some of its themes: where production and postproduction decisions admittedly made my laugh before they made me cry, how Pulse chose to handle its themes was borderline insulting.

Amongst these exhaustive failures are themes tackling real-life fears, survival of the fittest, mental illness, and abuse.

What upset me the most was not that it chose to tackle these themes, it’s in the way it chose to frame them.

Again, to avoid any spoilers, let’s just say that its biggest overall offender here, is it’s framing of mental health issues.

This isn’t necessarily a Pulse-specific issue, however, because one of the few things I cannot get behind in the genre is how it tends to frame mental health. All too often, horror uses mental illness, and health issues in general, as something to fear. Not because mental illness sucks, but because, to horror, mental illness is the perfect deus ex machina for violence and destruction.

Though not always explicitly stated, nearly every character in Pulse has some sort of mental health issue. The series’ more typically masculine leads all have some sort of mixture of mania and narcissism that lead, or have led, them to violence and abuse. Its more typically feminine leads both have some sort of mixture between depression and identity dysphoria which lead, or have led, them to be the victims of abuse and manipulation.

Both classes of characters, however, all fall under the guise of a poorly executed Alice in Wonderland-esque psychosis, enhanced by whatever the hell this electromagnetic pulse bomb thing did that was somehow caused by the game but is never actually explained.

As someone who has chronic mental health issues and has experienced a couple of psychotic episodes here and there, I can promise you that psychosis – and mental illness – does not make you an inherently violent perpetrator and/or an unstable person primed for victimhood. As a creative, I can promise you there are better ways to frame your themes that doesn’t demonise them because you’re too lazy to put effort into how you tackle them.

WAS IT WORTH IT?
Don’t get me wrong, there are things I didn’t mind about the show: for what it’s worth, the performances are decent, most of the main cast is kind of hot, the concept is fine, there are glimpses of passable tension, I really liked Jaz’s makeup, and I own Caspar’s pink Mr Price bomber (which I wear with pride).

However, Pulse falters on almost every level it possibly can but somehow manages to do so in a way that doesn’t even count as “it’s so bad, it’s good.” You had one job.

Final verdict: I watched the first half of the season at 1.5x but slowed it down to 1.25x during the marginally better second half.

Giving it a decent-to-strong 2.5/10.

Pulse is available to stream on Showmax now.