Octane AKA Pulse

I saw this movie titled Octane (also titled Pulse in the USA for some reason) on the satellite at one time, and boy, was it a memorable thriller and horror movie!

So you have Senga Wilson, a recently divorced mother, driving her teenaged daughter Natasha AKA Nat home from a visit with Nat's father, Marek. Since Senga is pretty strict, and Nat is pretty rebellious, Nat runs off with a cult that is obsessed with blood and cars.

Senga goes Mama Bear from this, and tries to go to the police for help...but the Police Are Useless. It becomes painfully clear that Senga is not a well woman, considering that she supposedly takes medication and that she has a hallucination of a Christian missionary saying something about how everyone looks for answers, but you can get answers for everything, and that asking the right questions are more important!

Fortunately, Senga finds the cultists, and she is assisted by a stranger called The Recovery Man. TRM ends up revealing later that he has a Dead Little Sister named Christine who became a member of this cult, and when it became clear to him that she was irreversibly brainwashed, he killed her. It's Personal for TRM when it comes to this cult.

The Father, who is the leader of the cult, tries to initiate Nat into his cult. Senga intervenes and Nat runs off. Then TF reveals a bombshell, which is this: when Nat was only a fetus developing in her mother's womb, Senga tried having an abortion, and it failed. Senga goes into a near catatonic state over this. Good thing TRM got her out of it, and reveals that Marek has been murdered by the cultists. When Senga reveals this to Nat, Nat realizes that the cult is a group of Complete Monsters.

TRM and TF get into a fight and both of them are supposedly killed in an explosion. The ending has Senga and Nat driving home and making a stop at a gas station. While Senga is inside the station, a black car pulls up next to her car, and the opaque window rolls down. It's not shown who is in there, but Nat's expression indicates that Nat knows who it is and she is terrified. The black car drives off, and Senga gets back in her car to see Nat spooked. They find razor blades - The Father's calling card - attached to the rear view mirror of her car.

A number of people seem to think the film sucks, but I would argue that it has some interesting ideas and some prime candidates for High Octane Nightmare Fuel, like a cult that seems to know everything about you and anticipates your moves, hallucinations, and abortion being considered the same as Offing the Offspring. Maybe it's not the best film around, but boy, is it a memorable film!

I only watched it for the belly licking.

Was that in the scene where The Father was seducing Nat? Boy, it just seemed creepy how they were close to doing it in a car... the same car whose trunk contains Nat's murdered father, Marek! Eek!

An interesting thing I found out about this movie was that the writer wanted the cult to be a group of vampires. However, the director objected to that and decided to change it to a cult that has a number of parallels to Charles Manson and his cult/family/group. That's interesting, because this was a film made in Britain and British people are probably not familiar with Manson. This would qualify as Executive Meddling, but I would say that while vampires would explain the blood obsession, making the group Manson-like is probably scarier than vampires. What Could Have Been, indeed!

edited 24th Apr '12 2:40:29 PM by TiggersAreGreat

After checking this movie out on the other Wiki, it turns out this has Mischa Barton and a Boondock Saint/my favourite zombie-killing hillbilly. So I'm probably going to find a way to watch it.

edited 7th May '12 3:56:41 PM by disruptorfe404