The Duke Watches "White Noise" - Page 4

However the hell, there are times when White Noise, which has been granted a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card on account of the inherent creepiness of its subject matter (I mean come the fuck on, you could have Cynthia Rothrock starring as a kung-fu defence attorney, and it'd still freak the hell out of a fella, provided it had enough sound effects and so on on account of the "DEAD"), still manages to annoy a fella somewhat. For motherfucking example, plot canyons appear all the damn time, and characters are remarkably inconsistent when it comes to the old intelligence and "logic" and stuff; One minute they're drawing seemingly impossible links between the most minute pieces of information, the next they're taking half-an-hour of screentime to work out something so blindingly, frustratingly obvious that you've already worked it out fifteen minutes before they even consider starting to think about it.

There's also a sense that certain scenes or characters have been drastically trimmed, so moments which should knock you upside the teeth in a Usual Suspects-esque manner have you instead wondering about who the fuck was that / what the fuck was that / why the fuck is that? And so on.

In addition to this, even though the flick is pleasingly downbeat throughout, there's still a couple seconds at the end that make a man wanna puke.

Also, why the hell do ghosts have to be so damn cryptic all the time? (ha ha. Cryptic. And they're ghosts, so…) If they've only got one chance for to get some vital message across, why not just come out and fucking say it? "Yeah, thing is, I'm (Whoever the hell. Deceased), I buried my life savings under the tree in the back yard. There's a shovel in the shed. Go about four foot, four and a half, tops. Just under the oak that's got the carving of a penis on it. The address is 444 North Crescent. Not 445, although they also have a similar tree. Cheers."

Why all this "Maple… Ash… Don't believe it" nonsense? Why all the "Jimmy… isn't… frozen?"

Unless maybe you were enquiring as to the reliability of a cryogenic chamber you been working on, and the test subject is a fella called Jimmy. But I digress.

So what can be learned from it all is that even with a screenplay that borders on ridiculous half-way-through, you can still craft a memorable, brilliantly effective horror flick by taking the time to make sure every fucking scene has the ability to jangle a man's nerves. It might just be that there's a mirror in the top left that unsettles for no discernable reason. It might just be that someone's putting on a radio, and you know no good can come of it, and even if the scene ends and everything's grand, you're still thinking about that damn radio, how some catastrophic shit must be just around the corner.

Article Author: Duke De Mondo

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