User reviews

Viewing "Impulse" is a very satisfying experience. Unpredictable films are such a rarity, when one comes along like "Impulse", it is something to embrace. The script is logical, and extremely creative. Meg Tilly, Tim Matheson, Hume Cronyn, and Bill Paxton, give believable performances. This could have played out like a zombie movie, but "Impulse" is far superior to any boring "zombiefest", and originality shines through in almost every scene. You get the feeling that something like this could have actually happened, even though the script is pure fiction. From the "grabber" opening till the credits roll, you will be fascinated. Very entertaining and definitely recommended. - MERK

OK, first of all, ignore the last person' review. They admit to falling asleep through it so it's no wonder they didn't understand what was going on!!! As thriller/horrors go, this film ain't too bad, it is certainly very watchable. Right from the opening scenes you get a general idea exactly what is going to be the cause of all the craziness that follows, and come the end you are proved right with everything being made clear.

I enjoyed this movie, it was quite eerie at times and as old films go it was passable. Great to watch late at night! I give it a generous 7 out of 10.

The idea of a town going slowly mad is not an original one, but it's cleverly handled in this disturbing little film, which eschews gruesome horror in favour of an accumulation of telling detail. Well worth viewing.

Part of me doesn't know how to rate this, because I saw it years and years ago, but it's one of those films which left a vivid impression on me. "Impulse" is the story of a town who due to an unknown chemical in the milk supply(the townspeople never know) begin to lose all impulse control.

What follows are increasingly disturbing scenes, which flow into each other, blankly, as a sheriff opens fire on young delinquents, a mother watches nonchalantly as her children light one of her friends on fire, doctors turn off life support, and sexual laws and norms completely breakdown. It's a bleak film, where impulses like curiosity, the desire to save others, are spare, and sex and violence all but absolute by the films apocalyptic end, involving a government cleansing with a crop duster. One of those odd sci-fi films you watch late at night and confuse for a dream till see the box in the video one day. Be interesting to take a second look.

Firstly to enjoy this film, you have to have some basic knowledge, on how various, governmental agencies and the military industrial complex conduct themselves. Lots of real examples, that have been declassified under the FOIA, or just available but ignored by the big press.

Secondly, this film will not entertain people who love the super fast pacing of modern big budget films which rely to exploit your senses by ridiculous nonstop fight scenes, CGI cars that defy all laws of physics, etc. Impulse, doesn't have the slow pace of 70s westerns, but it is slow enough where you have to think carefully about what the characters are thinking and feeling.

I'm sure the horror junkies who especially love zombie films will enjoy Impulse...given that the viewer has the first or second parameters, listed above.

You, know who you are so either skip this for Fast and Furious 23, or enjoy this hidden gem.

"Impulse" is a movie for which I had relatively high expectations: the idea of people losing the ability to control their impulses and totally disregarding all the established social rules sounds very, very intriguing. However, the result we get here is (despite a few unexpected twists) a disappointing and very slow-paced (there is a dialogue-free passage where a man simply walks around for about seven minutes) thriller. George Romero had used basically the same story ten years earlier in "The Crazies" - and he did it much better. (**)

City girl Meg Tilly receives a horrifying phone call from her mother and, understandably shaken, returns home to her family's rural digs, only to be faced with a mystery: why are all the homespun residents acting out in bizarre and unsettling ways? Radiation thriller, with barely a nod to ecology, has small town residents going berserk, which (laughably) includes two women gazing at each other with desire in a public place and Tim Matheson receiving oral attention from a girl on an office bench. The picture is too silly for words, wasting Tilly's wistfulness and quiet intensity on trash while forcing itself into a corner it can't possibly hope to get out of. Some of the cinematography by Thomas Del Ruth is good (particularly a fire sequence set inside a garage), though he is let down by the scrappy editing--and a fairly bathetic finale. Simplistic screenplay has nary a surprise nor a shred of originality up its sleeve. *1/2 from ****

This is a kind of a mixed review. First, I'll get to the stuff that I liked about "Impulse". The movie doesn't try to do too much right away, instead attempting to slowly build a sense of terror. The protagonists are less stupid than what you usually get in a movie like this, figuring that something is wrong fairly early on. The actions of the sick townspeople are believable and creepy. And some of the photography is really good, giving the viewer some striking images.

Now, the bad stuff. The movie is ultimately TOO slow for its own good. If things were speeded up a little bit, the movie would have had an acceptable pace. While some of the photography is good, much of the movie has a flat made-for-TV feel (not surprising, since this was made by the ABC television network.) The revelation of what's causing the mayhem is not done by detective work, but more feels like the screenwriters were getting near the end and felt they had to reveal it right there and then. The ending is also unsatisfying, leaving several big questions unanswered.

I have been known to fall asleep during films, but this is usually due to a combination of things including, really tired, being warm and comfortable on the sette and having just eaten a lot. However on this occasion I fell asleep because the film was rubbish. The plot development was constant. Constantly slow and boring. Things seemed to happen, but with no explanation of what was causing them or why. I admit, I may have missed part of the film, but i watched the majority of it and everything just seemed to happen of its own accord without any real concern for anything else. I cant recommend this film at all.

Coming home should be reminiscent and subtitling. However, when a relative and the rest of the town started acting peculiar, then you start to wonder. In the movie "Impulse", it makes a whole lot of sense. Meg Tilly play Jennifer, a city girl whose mother called her and started to act erratic and who later shoot herself in the head. Tim Matheson plays Stuart, her husband who helps out with the family. Earlier, there was a earthquake, and after wards things were fine. Wrong. After the quake, people began to act violent or sexual. The bar scenes are always going to be unpredictable. Until one of the locals breaks his own fingers. Or how about the bank worker who lets a customer grab the money then go to the bar and become very unreasonable with Jennifer. Though Jennifer was the only one who didn't drink the local milk. It seems to be the cause of the insanity of the town. Since Stuart did work in the medical field, he was able to find out the cause of the insanity. Even though infected himself, he still have the guts to root out the cause. Very nice movie, could have more to it. Watchable. 2 out of 5 stars.

I saw this movie on SciFi the other day and must say it was like no other. A lot of cool scenes with people doing crazy s**t, cause they're acting on their first impulse and giving no second thoughts to their actions AKA some funny s**t. It didn't seem like it was that old a movie until the dude puts on a sleeveless jacket. Well this is my first attempt at writing a review for a movie so whatever. I'm gonna write more so hopefully they'll get better and if they don't then go cry to your mother!

(1984) Impulse THRILLER

A small earthquake happens distilling a small little town called Sutcliffe creating a stir. Then the next scene has a mother calling her daughter Jennifer (Meg Tilly) while living on a big city, talks a bunch of nonsense before she commits suicide by shooting herself. After learning that her mother survived and is in critical care, Jennifer and her boyfriend Stuart (Tim Matheson)then come back to the town for a visit to see how the mother is holding up. But as the film is progressing, more and more people start to act erratic as well with suicidal tendencies! The real problem is that it states the story instead of making something from it, such as how come it took them this long to discover something has been tainted? Or why it had to take a couple of newcomers to find out what the problem is? It has good intentions, but it doesn't go nowhere, for viewers are able to know what the problem is way before the characters do themselves making the overall experience into a predictable one, and rather pointless which might've worked as a 45 minute stint than it would be as a feature film!

I wasn't expecting much from this when it came on TV and was half-watching while doing computer stuff but it pretty soon drew me in. The characters and their interactions were much more realistic than I expected and the acting was really good. Last night I watched World War Z a big budget 'zombie' film from 2013 starring Brad Pitt and it was really poor - Impulse is a far more mature and involving treatment of a broadly similar theme.

Jennifer (Meg Tilly) returns to her small California hometown with her boyfriend Stuart (Tim Matheson) after her mother attempted suicide. The strange part is her mother did it on the phone after she called Jennifer in a rambling rage. The stranger part is everyone in the town has started acting kind of strange after a small earthquake. Something has caused folks to lose the inhibitions and it results in all out chaos with everyone raging or lusting after each other. Wow! Now this is why I love watching movies because there is always an unheralded gem out there like this. Sure, it was done before with Romero's very similar The Crazies (1973), but this is just as engaging. This was Brit director Graham Baker's second feature (after The Final Conflict in 1981) and he handles it so well. There is a great slow build of craziness until things just explode. One great scene has Hume Cronyn as the town doc tampering with the mother's oxygen supply. Another is a scene where Matheson succumbs to the craziness by seducing a bubble gum chewing teenager that is done perfectly with no dialogue. Look for Bill Paxton as Jennifer's younger brother and Peter Jason as a government guy.

Now for something completely different. I didn't know what to make of this film when I first saw it, back in 86'. I was surprised too that Tim Matheson was in this, after remembering his grand comic role in Up The Creek. Even though I loved this movie, because you didn't know what crazy thing was gonna happen next, where it's story sucked in, you so desperately wanted to know why these people were acting so crazy, when being told it's reasons at the end, I found it just too hard to buy. I'll never forget the snapping back finger scene in the bar, by that guy who didn't like having to wait, to have a chance to dance with Tilly. What you learn at the end, was that aerial spraying that still happens today, contaminated this milk at this plant, where there was an earthquake prior. Matheson drinks the milk that has this toxic substance. His Girlfriend, Tilly doesn't, but her brother, a younger Bill Paxton and the father do. Aha. It was just too much to buy that something like happening, could send people into such hysteric and violent states, as if acting on impulse, may'be the most dangerous emotion, where rational thought takes a backseat. The destructive and violent acts shown in the movie, some quite frightening, are impactful. This movie's a good watch, mainly 'cause it's different, if unique. Even the sex scene between Tilly and Matheson, where things hotted up, got frightening, when I first watched it. But remember, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I love the realization Matheson made when he found the spark of his violent acts, like a swell of relief one would say, amidst all the madness we saw prior. The end too worked well, this time the credits, unaccompanied by music, but a howl of wind, Tilly, standing forlorn, and resolute. The fight must on, as life.