Posted: 01/14/2005

White Noise

(2005)

by Anna Keizer

When I first heard about White Noise coming out, I was totally stoked. Hearing voices of the deceased in your stereo? Seeing the dead on your television screen? Ever since I first heard little Carol Ann’s voice calling out from the TV set in Poltergeist, I had been curious as to what else our modern-day conveniences could tell us besides the daily weather and news. Even before this flick, I had read a bit about EVP- electronic voice phenomenon- documented instances of the dead being heard and seen through certain radio and television frequencies. Now White Noise has come along to explore these happenings.

The film begins promisingly enough. Jonathan Rivers (Keaton) cannot stop grieving for his dead wife, Anna (West). In desperation, he pays a visit to Raymond Price (McNeice), a gentleman he had met only once months earlier. A mysterious fellow, Raymond had confirmed Anna’s death while the authorities were still looking for her body. He claimed that Anna was contacting him from beyond the grave. Sure enough, upon that first visit Raymond produces a cassette tape and pops it into his stereo. A woman’s voice is faintly heard above the static, calling out Jonathan’s name. Convinced that it is indeed Anna, Jonathan returns again and again to Raymond’s home, a den filled with electronic equipment of all sorts to document the hundreds of voices and faces recorded over the years. Now preoccupied only with contacting his wife, Jonathan turns his own home into a receiving center for the dead after Raymond’s own unexplained passing.

Yet in his efforts to communicate with Anna, Jonathan also attracts unwanted attention from other spirits, some of which are not very friendly. Unfortunately, it’s at this point that White Noise begins to break down. Had Sax just concentrated on how Jonathan’s grief propels him into obsession and seclusion, he could have held the film’s beginning intensity. Instead the film unravels, falling off into a storyline of Anna informing Jonathan of future events so that he can rescue strangers from impending death. The ending is worse, bringing in characters and events that have nothing to do with the original premise of the film. We even get the conventional abandoned warehouse that’s been turned into an evil lair of fear and horror. It’s a cheap and unfulfilling conclusion to an otherwise thrilling movie. Too bad. White Noise may have been well intentioned, but this film needs to be put to rest.

Anna Keizer is a film critic and writer living in Los Angeles.

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