Movie Review: White Noise

You might be wondering: Why hasn’t Michael Keaton picked up a lead role in nearly a decade? Well, White Noise is the answer. With a running time just under one hour and forty minutes, White Noise is 98 minutes too long. It is way too vanilla to be even described as a decent psychological horror film. Worse than both Dragonfly and The Forgotten, White Noise makes the likes of The Grudge and even Darkness Falls look frightening and commendable. White Noise is an utter cacophony of insanely predictable plot developments, silly science, and stupid static that will surely lull any moviegoer into a slumber.

Jonathan Rogers (Michael Keaton) is a well-off architect whose wife Anna (Chandra West) announces that she is pregnant. After some small poorly inserted love scenes – with smiles and laughs shared between husband and wife – that solely establish a connection (albeit a bad one), you guessed it…Anna dies. Her car is discovered on the side of a road near a small cliff, and her body is found on the rocks below. Apparently, her death was caused by severe head trauma from the fall.

Months later, through a series of transmissions, via various electronic devises, Jonathan hears his dead wife call out his name. Jonathan then turns to Raymond (Ian McNeice), an obese British man who explains the concept behind Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP). EVP is the supposed means wherein the dead can contact the living through the static of any electronic equipment—you name it: televisions, telephones, radios, CD players and answering machines; apparently, the deceased have their own channel that spans all mediums.

As fast as you can snap your fingers, Jonathan goes from highly skeptical of Raymond’s convincing, to an absolute EVP fanatic—buying every type of electronic equipment you can think of and then both watching and listening to endless hours of static. Maybe it is just me, but after seeing nothing buy grey pixels and hearing nothing but a crackling buzz, your mind definitely has the ability to decide what visions you see and what sounds you perceive.

Article Author: Brandon Valentine

Brandon Valentine is a film critic from Hershey, PA. Aside from possessing the last name “Valentine” and living in “the Sweetest Place on Earth,” Brandon was also born on Valentine’s Day. That’s right, a Valentine born on Valentine’s Day. …

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