White Noise (2005)

You won't be disappointed!

Perfect cast and a good story

Just what I expected

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Successful architect Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is overjoyed when his wife Anna (Chandra West) reveals her pregnancy. Then she disappears. Jonathan confronts Raymond Price (Ian McNeice) who's been following him. Raymond who lost his son tells him about Electronic Voice Phenomenon and that he has received messages from Anna. Her body is found having drowned. Six months later, Jonathan moves into an apartment and strange electronic things continue. He becomes convinced about EVP. He goes to Raymond who is now helping Sarah Tate (Deborah Kara Unger) with her lost fiancé. As he obsessively decipher the electronic signals, he encounters menacing spirits and even those who are not dead quite yet.Michael Keaton is past his early successes and is yet to gain his resurgent accolades. It's a time period when he was a has-been doing limited work. If nothing else, this movie's success shows that he can still be the lead. I really like the cold static moody atmosphere. I don't think the son is necessary but it's where the story goes that leaves me a bit cold. The spirits are a disappointment. The near-death messages idea is where the movie goes down the wrong path. The moody ghost story turns into a muddled thriller. The spirits' climatic battle is a mess. This movie starts good but ends poorly.

Jonathan Rivers (Keaton) world turns upside down when his author wife (Chandra West) is found dead of an apparent accident. His grief turns him to a man named Raymond (McNeice) who does experiments with EVP Electronic Voice Phenomena. This phenomenon allows the dead to communicate with the living through machines and electronics. Raymond tells Jonathan that he is getting messages from his wife which drives him to invest in equipment and see, or hear for himself. This leads to an unhealthy obsession that gets out of hand fast. The EVP in this script is a cool idea and early on Director Geoffrey Sax uses this for a few solid jump scares and some genuine creepy moments. Unfortunately it runs out of steam quickly after these first few scenes. The second half of this movie just mail's it in and it definitely misses a good opportunity. The sound design is excellent but it is wasted on scenes that are just simply dull. The script is way too involved in Jonathan's obsession with the EVP and a simpler and straight forward approach by the writers and director would have helped a lot. This is certainly watchable, but instantly forgettable.

This is a tough subject matter to pull off and it helps if the Creators behind the Movie are passionate or at least literate about the obscure Paranormal Phenomenon that is being fictionalized.Gazing at a snowy TV screen like a Rorschach Test and discovering faint, barely recognizable images and listening for far away sounds that become almost decipherable, but not quite, or maybe so, is not the stuff of compelling Cinema. It is utilized here for some Suspense, but alas, it becomes too much of a not too good a thing.The Plot failing to make any coherent explanation of the Subject, and it is a Subject that requires more than cursory exposition, diverges and meanders as it adds Precognition to the Story and other extraneous stuff like manifestations and a deranged Killer, just for some Hollywood filler.Overall, it is a misguided attempt at Marketing a new twist to the Horror Movie Crowd and is an expensive exploitation with no regards, embarrassing itself with a Half-Baked product that could do no more than fill seats initially, with a clever Ad Campaign. But when those seats were empty after the first run, there was no place to hide from this poorly conceived disappointment.

I am one of the many who believe that there are such things as ghosts. This film delivers its first large impact in the beginning when you see that a husband and wife were very close to each other and in some accident, his wife dies. The concept of EVP is very believable seeing as how real paranormal investigators use EVP the same way as presented in the movie. I also like Micheal Keaton as a choice for this movie. Every actor is different and I think Keaton's performance during his mourning period is very believable. I also like Keaton's performance once he is introduced to EVP. His first visit to the EVP guy's house is more of a "I'm still skeptical but these things are happening and I want to know why" kind of visit. Once he listens to his wife on the recording he understands this isn't some joke and that he can communicate with his wife from beyond the grave. If you get past the horror aspect of the movie, the entire plot revolves around Keaton and West's love for each other.