White Noise Collection

Michael Keaton

Chandra West

Deborah Kara Unger

Ian McNeice

Keegan Connor Tracy

Sarah Strange

Nicholas Elia

Mike Dopud

Marsha Regis

Brad Sihvon

Amber Rothwell

Mitchell Kosterman

Suzanne Ristic

L. Harvey Gold

Miranda Frigon

Aaron Douglas

Anthony Harrison

Bruce Dawson

Benita Ha

April Telek

Geoffrey Sax

Niall Johnson

Chris Seager

Paul Brooks

Nick Arthurs

Simon Brooks

Robert Little

Gregory G. Venturi

Shelly Shaw

Michael S. Bolton

Penny A. Chalmers

Karen L. Matthews

Maureen Webb

Shawn Williamson

Claude Foisy

Jonathan Shore

Stephen Hegyes

Norm Waitt

Scott Niemeyer

Hugh Johnson

Dave Conway

Tim Storvick

Rob Court

Lalit Goyal

Lisa Sweet

Dean Capstick

Richard Dobbin

Tony Beck

Deni King

Mark Noda

Miha Jaramaz

Randy Gerston

Michael Taschereau

Gene McCormick

Barry Kaiser

Jessica Clothier

Bernard O'Reilly

Linda Leduc

Elaine Arsens

Chris Helcermanas-Benge

Owen Bleasdale

Sarah Cloutier

Adina Shore

Reg Advocaot

Susan Kearney

William Skinner

Sharon Lark

Frank Haddad

Jamie Humphrey

Michele O'Flanagan

Dave Roman

Jill Allanson

David R. Anderson

Richard Coleman

John Dekker

Greg Jackson

Mike Grimes

Marty McInally

Chris Doss

Simon Allmark

Anne Jacobsen

Pascal Verschooris

Kimberly Lozinski

Richard Barrett

Donald James Davey

Simon Giles

Randy Lee

Natalie Allan

Rod Newby

Lee Kerr

Mary L. Hart-Mastro

Erika Espinosa

Kimberley Regent

Iesza Jessica Jordan

Rick Jermakowicz

Graham Cristie

Judi Varga

Dave Klassen

George Barbour

Mark Kenna

Stewart Henderson

David Allcock

Ed Anders

Dave Dibdin

Shane Lennox

Michelle Lambert

Scott Cozens

Deborah Slonowski

Carolyn Anderson

Gavain Browne

Clif Kosterman

Emanuela Daus

Gianluca Buttari

Hilary Wyatt

Brian Leff

Karin Behrenz

Chris Andrews

Randy Kennedy

Glenn Bottomley

Adam Sharpe

Drama

Horror

Thriller

White Noise

White Noise UK Ltd.

Universal Pictures

Brightlight Pictures

Endgame Entertainment

Gold Circle Films

The Movie Network

Corus Entertainment

Chum Television

Senator International

Canada

United Kingdom

United States of America

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 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.

English

White Noise  Trailer