★ 3 / 10
White Noise fizzles out its noisy static by
The Movie Diorama
White Noise fizzles out its noisy static by just being plain boring. Watching Keaton as he unconvincingly stares at televised white noise for an hour and a…
White Noise fizzles out its noisy static by just being plain boring. Watching Keaton as he unconvincingly stares at televised white noise for an hour and a half, which is essentially nothing, perfectly surmises the experience of Sax' supposedly supernatural horror. However, the biggest crime that the studio committed was releasing the feature on the first weekend of the year. Now, it's common knowledge that the initial start to the cinematic year typically begins with a disposable horror. Well, White Noise is to blame. Signalling untapped box office potential, despite the overt opinions of critics. And, as to be expected, matches the quality of a broken tape. A successful architect loses his wife to a drowning accident, to which he then encounters a psychic introducing him to the supernatural phenomenon of EVP.
Electronic Voice Phenomena. Y'know, recording background noise in a room, playing back the tape and flabbergasted when the ghost of Michael Jackson hauntingly sings "Thriller". Except in White Noise the tool that's used is, well, white noise. The annoyingly hypnotising static from televisions when no channel is picked up from the current frequency. Keaton becomes entranced by the ominous voices and high definition faces he sees within the six televisions he owns in his modern apartment. Who is making contact? Is it his wife? Malevolent entities trapped in the cubic prison that is a television? Pretty sure writer Johnson didn't even know himself.
The film is a mess. It's muddled, confused and abhorrently remains stagnant throughout. This architect, a father, essentially abandons his son when fixated on saving souls warned by his deceased wife that conveniently match the images in the white noise as soon as he arrives to any given scenario, despite "Willow Avenue" being mentioned days before. So think of it as 'Final Destination' meets 'Pulse' (original, obviously...). Except it's neither as entertaining as the former nor as horrifying as the latter.
Keaton looked bored as hell and overacted in times of emotional distress, although reassured the narrative with control. The jump scares were obnoxiously tame, yet admittedly one of the piercing noises made me twitch my body. The ending is...well, let's just not talk about it. It's terrible, with CGI ghost things swooping in on Batman, and answers no lingering questions that the mystery of EVP conjured up. Heck, the feature begins and concludes with onscreen text about "existing" occurrences. "1 in 12 cases are dangerous". Yeah. Ok. You know what is dangerous? Ruining Keaton's career. We had to wait a decade later for his rejuvenation!
White Noise admittedly has a decent enough premise, yet Sax' lack of direction accompanied by shoddy writing and lacklustre performances resulted in one film that had the similarities to white noise. Nothingness.
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★ 6 / 10
I wouldn't exactly call it cinematic pleasure.....but I sorta liked it!
Danny-Rodriguez
Michael Keaton gives a good performance as architect Jonathan Rivers. I found the movie good and thrilling at times but it somehow lost its phase in the end.…
Michael Keaton gives a good performance as architect Jonathan Rivers. I found the movie good and thrilling at times but it somehow lost its phase in the end. But then again that's also the case with many films like Timecop and Hard Cash.
Storywise the movie was quite good. The idea of a device which can record our personalities after death is quite interesting. A quote by Thomas Edison made in 1928, which is used in the beginning of the movie, states: "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." The concept of E.V.P.; (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) is elaborated on through the entire movie and it leaves us still thinking.
The directing and the way it's written holds up pretty good up until about 2/3 in the movie. The characters and Michael's acting as a father is quite good and not flawed in any way. The story flows in a good and convincing way. But it's in the end where it starts to get a little hectic. There's a twist to the story which sorta destroys the original set up and it becomes a tad....well dull and inconsistent to be perfectly blunt.
But all in all this is an enjoyable film. Just don't expect to be blown away.
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★ 4 / 10
Too Little, Too late.
Zaphod_42
I first heard about White Noise when I saw the TV advert. Before then I didn't even know it existed. I watched the trailer online and decided that I would go…
I first heard about White Noise when I saw the TV advert. Before then I didn't even know it existed. I watched the trailer online and decided that I would go and see it. Now being a fan of films like The Sixth Sense, I thought that this film would give me everything I wanted. It has Michael Keaton in it, and he rocks. Unfortunately the film did not deliver. It tried to be another Sixth Sense or Stir of Echoes, and failed miserably. It has a very promising start, but the middle just drags on repeating itself, and ends with a completely poor twist which any monkey could have figured out. Unfortunately like most "Scary" films nowadays it relies on loud noises and bangs to make the audience jump. This film could have been so much more. It's a shame because it was a good idea.
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7%
TOMATOMETER
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Cool flick, don;t let anyone ruin your fun.