White Noise (2005)

Very Cool!!!

Absolutely Brilliant!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is a tough subject matter to pull off and it helps if the Creators behind the Movie are passionate or at least literate about the obscure Paranormal Phenomenon that is being fictionalized.Gazing at a snowy TV screen like a Rorschach Test and discovering faint, barely recognizable images and listening for far away sounds that become almost decipherable, but not quite, or maybe so, is not the stuff of compelling Cinema. It is utilized here for some Suspense, but alas, it becomes too much of a not too good a thing.The Plot failing to make any coherent explanation of the Subject, and it is a Subject that requires more than cursory exposition, diverges and meanders as it adds Precognition to the Story and other extraneous stuff like manifestations and a deranged Killer, just for some Hollywood filler.Overall, it is a misguided attempt at Marketing a new twist to the Horror Movie Crowd and is an expensive exploitation with no regards, embarrassing itself with a Half-Baked product that could do no more than fill seats initially, with a clever Ad Campaign. But when those seats were empty after the first run, there was no place to hide from this poorly conceived disappointment.

As much as the beginning of the film had promise - happily married couple are destroyed by the wife dying in an apparently tragic accident - the fact that the grieving husband was receiving messages from his dead wife through white noise (reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist) seemed like a suspenseful plot until we understand it is to help other people who are about to die.I wanted his wife's communications to be about the exact nature of her own demise and that it had been far more sinister than it first appeared - which it was - but not in the way we want it to be. The fact that she was newly pregnant played out to virtually no significance. Unfortunately, there are too many unanswered questions and loose ends that leave the viewer with an overwhelming sense of frustration.I marked it down for being somewhat unsatisfied by it, while marking it up more for creating genuine fear and suspense.

I'm grading White Noise on a very generous curve, mainly because it wasn't entirely the garbage I expected and it has a few merits, chief among them some competent direction and a decent central performance by Michael Keaton. He's a very likable, engaging character ... whatever happened to his career? I don't know.Anyhow, the basic plot is that Keaton's wife doesn't come home one night and before long the police locate her car and it's looking very likely that she's never coming home again. A few days later, this fat guy whose name escapes me shows up and tells Keaton that his wife is in fact dead and she's been contacting him (the FG) from beyond the grave. It turns out this gentleman is a bit of an obsessive in EVP, which proposes that the dead can communicate with the living through electronic devices. Keaton is skeptical, but when he begins to receive strange, garbled telephone calls and electronic messages he becomes obsessed with communicating with his late wife. What he doesn't realize is that the signals he's sending out are attracting not only his wife but also unfriendly spirits who may mean him harm.The movie is initially intriguing, but it didn't take long for the plot contrivances to start piling up and killing the suspense. For example, we never understand how the Fat Guy knew that the spirit who's been communicating with him (through foggy images and garbled language) was Keaton's wife. We're also asked to believe that Keaton accepts EVP purely on the basis of a few creepy phone calls, although his wife is a famed author and may have some unhinged fans. As the plot moves along, Keaton finds himself connected with a string of violent accidents and a murder. The police never question him about his repeated involvement in these events. The Fat Guy is apparently murdered - Keaton never reflects on this or seems to ask why.The bigger problem for me though is that the movie is so damn derivative, especially of The Mothman Prophecies, a far better movie that came out 3 years earlier. We get the obligatory shadowy figures moving behind an unsuspecting character and loud jump scares but that's really it. The film is extremely short on original imagery or atmosphere and there was literally nothing on screen that I hadn't seen in other (better) movies: aside from Mothman there were serious echoes of The Grudge and The Ring. For a movie about mysterious messages from beyond the grave, there was a real dearth of imagination and the whole thing just felt tepid.Really not worth watching on anything but free cable.

White Noise is directed by Geoffrey Sax and written by Niall Johnson. It stars Michael Keaton, Deborah Kara Unger, Chandra West & Ian McNeice. The title of the film relates to Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), which is a apparently a case where voices of the dead can be heard via electronic equipment such as TV static, tape recordings etc. Plot here sees Keaton play successful architect Jonathan Rivers whose world collapses when his beautiful pregnant wife, Anna (West), disappears and is subsequently found dead after an accident at the river. During his grief he is approached by Raymond Price (McNeice) who tells him that after his son died he received contact from him via EVP. Initially sceptic, Jonathan is amazed to find out that it is indeed possible and he becomes obsessed with talking to Anna, but it comes at a cost for once the channel is tuned in, other unwanted beings can come thru too."Nobody knows whether our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere, but if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life--such an instrument ought to record something".Welcome to one of the most frustrating chillers of recent times. Whether one is a believer in the supernatural, life after dead etc is kind of moot because the premise at the heart of white Noise is fascinating regardless of ones beliefs. Tho it's true to say that that those of an open mind are likely to get something more out of its subject matter than those who aren't. Certainly myself had never heard of EVP before the release of White Noise, so in that the film has done its job. However, after a truly brilliant trailer for the film had set it up nicely, and a first half that oozes genuine chills and scientific interest; the film descends into something of a farce by dispensing with the cranial interest value to become a kidnap thriller.After Keaton draws us in by doing a first class job of essaying a meditation on grief, he, and the other two pivotal characters along side him (Unger & McNeice), are too thinly drawn once the subject of EVP raises its static based head. It's very much a case of "oh we have lost someone, this should ease our grief" and jump right into it. Keaton then lurches from one plot contrivance to another which only serves as being a lazy set up for the big finale. Such a shame because the atmosphere was well crafted by Sax up till the last third and there is some effective jolts along the way. But it's muddled with its intentions as the makers looses sight of what, it seems, they set out to achieve. The outcome of which, as the film shifts in tone and the effects take over, doesn't make much sense.It gathered enough of a fan base to warrant a sequel in 2007, where nobody involved behind the camera with this film returned. They quit whilst marginally being ahead one feels. For Keaton and the interesting subject matter this is just about above average. But all told, in light of how it pans out, you'd be better off seeking out Gregory Hoblit's undervalued Frequency (2000) instead. 6/10