Thanks to good acting, good filming, and a creepy supernatural story, White Noise manages to bring a good amount of tension and scares to the screen despite having some faults.
The movie was directed by Geoffrey Sax and written by Niall Johnson. It stars Michael Keaton, Deborah Kara Unger, Chandra West, and Ian McNeice.
Keaton plays architect Jonathan Rivers - a man who loses his wife, an international best-selling author, under mysterious circumstances and slowly begins to believe that she is trying to contact him from the “other side.”
This belief leads Rivers to seek out Raymond Price (McNeice) - an investigator of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (E.V.P.). The two men use E.V.P. as a means to communicate with Rivers’ wife, but Keaton soon discovers that once the door to the other side is open there is no telling who will come through and whether those spirits will be good or evil.
From there, the movie spins into a mix of Poltergeist and The Ring as Rivers, who believes he is being aided by messages from his dead wife, tries to save the lives of Price’s past clients before evil spirits kill them. Along the way, Keaton meets Sarah Tate (Unger) - who also sought Price’s help to contact her dead fiancé. The two struggle to discover how these murders and accidents are happening and how Keaton can stop them.
White Noise delivers some moments that will really make you jump. It has the right tone and filming to set the mood for a creepy atmosphere. The images that quickly appear and disappear on the television screens keep you watching and questioning what you just saw.
Also, the voices, drowned out by the roar of background static, make you strain to hear what might be there, and help to send chills down your spine at what you think you heard.
Keaton, who seems very stiff in the role at times, does a good job portraying Rivers as a man over his head, but too obsessed to stop. What starts as a way of mourning the death of his wife, becomes a race for life and death against supernatural forces.
Fast images bring plenty of scares in the movie
All of these elements keep you on the edge of your seat and hanging on just about every minute of this film. The movie has the perfect tints and camera angles to keep the hairs on the back of your neck standing until the credits role.
However, several large plot holes in the script and a weak-ending take away from the tension in the film and begin to distract towards the conclussion.<!--page-->
White Noise Main Menu
Although his wife was a best-selling writer and was missing for several days, Keaton, who has no alibi for the night she died, is never once questioned by the police or mentioned as a suspect. This wouldn’t be a major hole in the movie’s plot except for the time the film spends on showing news reports about the investigation of her death.When we learn the truth about her death (and I am not going to say it in the review), it becomes a major flaw in the script given today’s police forensic science. I can’t say more because I don’t want to give away the movie’s ending.
If Rivers’ lack of alibi wasn’t enough for his wife’s death, the police also never question him when he discovers another murder, again alone and with no alibi, or when he reports Sarah’s attempted “suicide.” The fact that she lives through the attempted suicide also boggles the mind given how far she fell and how hard she hit that glass roof.
Again, the film’s flaws and the “Scooby Doo” ending distract from the overall feel of the movie, but they don’t ruin it. It is still very eerie at times and I promise there are scenes that will literally make you jump. The electronic voice phenomenon is interesting and chilling to watch even if at times you can’t help but say, “They’re here” as Keaton stares into the television static.
The DVD comes with some pretty good special features that further explore E.V.P. There are also several deleted scenes that do a good job adding some to the film, but do not save it from the holes in the plot.
The E.V.P. features include Hearing Is Believing: Actual E.V.P. Sessions, Making Contact: E.V.P. Experts, and Recording the Afterlife at Home.
The Hearing is Believing feature is a short documentary about E.V.P. that has interviews with actual E.V.P. investigators and people who have recorded the voices of people who died years before. They discuss how they were able to identify the voice and what they were saying.
White Noise Special Features
Making Contact: E.V.P. Experts follows two investigators as they record voices in a house that is supposed to be haunted. They discuss what they are doing and how the voices are picked up.
The Recording the Afterlife at Home feature teaches what is needed to attempt your own E.V.P. contacts. After watching the movie, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do this, but according to two experts it is fairly simple to do. All that is needed is a tape recorder, blank tape, a microphone, and some kind of static background noise. The two experts talk about the best ways to capture E.V.P. and different computer software that can be used to help boost and record what is happening.
White Noise is a movie that delivers the jumps needed for a supernatural thriller, but it is also a film with some problems. It has holes in the script that can become distracting, but also has enough tension and scares to keep you from noticing the flaws until close to the end. I would recommend the movie to any horror fan or any fan of supernatural “ghost” stories. It is fun to watch with an interesting premise that will keep you talking about it after the credits roll.
White Noise is available at Amazon and AmazonUK . For more information visit the film’s database .
DanaMay 18th, 2005 - 20:21:52
Good review. I liked it until the end, but it still gave me nightmares. It was like Poltergeist and the Ring now that I think about it.
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