Showmax releases trailer for horror series Pulse which stars Thapelo Mokoena.

Entertainment Reporter.

Showmax has released the first trailer for the original horror series Pulse, picked by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the 25 buzziest series at this year’s MIPTV, a leading global TV market in Cannes, France.

Shot in South Africa and Mauritius, Pulse is about an international group of game creators who 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.

“Pulse is unique in so many ways,” says Safta winner Tarryn Wyngaard (DAM). She plays Jaz, creator of a hit indie game that’s getting a mainstream reboot, for better or worse. “Stephen Clarke’s scripts were so incredibly out of this world and like nothing I’ve ever read before.”

Safta winner Thapelo Mokoena (Trackers) is playing against type as her ex, the reboot’s narcissistic producer.

“There isn’t anything like this show,” he says. “No offence to every other amazing series I’ve made, but Pulse is really one of the most, if not the most, amazing project I’ve ever made in my 20-year career.”

Other cast members include Sven Ruygrok (Spud’s Rambo), Carel Nel (Raised by Wolves), with cameos from Albert Pretorius (Nêrens, Noord-Kaap), Laré Birk (Vir Altyd), and screen legend Frank Opperman (Dominee Tienie, Nêrens).

The six-episode survival horror series is directed by multi-award-winner Sallas de Jager (Dominee Tienie, Free State), also known as the frontman of Sama-nominated Afrikaans folk-rock band Klopjag.

Speaking about his move into horror, Sallas says, “On the surface, it looks like a big shift, but for my period films, we created worlds that don’t exist anymore, so this didn’t feel that different,” says Sallas.

“My films have always been about the emotional survival of my characters, and with Pulse, I’ve focused on making everyone feel like real people, not just mechanisms to get to the next gory thing.”

Produced by Emmy winner Steve Lanning (Secret Garden), Pulse is set in a familiar office high-rise, which becomes steadily freakier thanks to Safta-winning production designer Waldemar Coetsee (Toorbos, Meerkat Maantuig) and the visionary VFX team of Laurent-Paul Robert (Harry Potter, The Dark Knight Rises) and Hilton Treves (Tomb Raider, Blood Psalms).

“It starts out as a very relatable office block, with everyone working late,” says Sallas. “We want the audience to feel like, ‘This can happen to me.'”

In many instances, the fear you see on screen is real. “We’d be filming something, crawling through vents, and they wouldn’t tell me, but they’d put the camera on me, and they’d do a bang or explosion, and I’d get an actual fright,” says Tarryn.

“It would take a while to calm down afterwards. There were a lot of pranks on set; it got quite funny behind the scenes with how people tried to spook each other. That was a definite highlight.”

Watch Trailer here:

Pulse is the latest in a string of internationally acclaimed horrors emerging from South Africa, like the multi-award-winning Fried Barry and Gaia and the critically acclaimed Glasshouse.

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