As soulless American remakes of Japanese horror titles go, 2006's "Pulse" was among the more forgettable. Yet it had the good grace to assemble a decent cast headlined by Kristen Bell. Not so "Pulse 2: Afterlife", which sees a troop of no-name actors navigate the sort-of apocalyptic world left in the wake of the former film's tech-savvy ghosts, who crop up throughout this movie in the form of incredibly unconvincing special effects that interact in hilariously awkward ways with the flesh-and-blood actors. What little plot there is concerns a father protecting his daughter from the ghost of her mother, who wants to claim her (and his) soul for reasons that aren't particularly clear. It's not even remotely interesting and the acting isn't exactly legendary either. As for the special effects: let's just say they remind less of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's masterful original movie than they seem to anticipate the green screen nightmare that would be "Jeepers Creepers: Reborn". Indeed, if this movie's mission was to make me pine for mediocre yankee takes on Asian horror, then it has to be considered a rousing success. In all the ways that matter, however, it is a catastrophe.
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