White Noise

by Matt Parks

Opening with a supporting quote from none other than Thomas Edison, ‘White Noise’ begins with an interesting (if dubious) idea: that the dead can communicate with the living via untuned electronic devices—a phenomenon known as Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), and maintains an eerie atmosphere thorough about half of the film before diluting its spooky premise with a cluttered, convoluted plot, bad special effects, and metaphysical inconsistencies.

A/V equipment is this film’s star, but Michael Keaton’s performance goes a long way in selling the film’s frequently shaky logic. But perhaps the filmmakers worried that watching and listening to Keaton dutifully watching and listening to audio recordings and video monitors would hold an audience for the whole 110-running time, so it turns out that tuning in the dead is not just listening, it’s “meddling” (an assertion the film fails to explain). From there, “White Noise” degenerates into a quotidian mystery/thriller that comes to an absurdly abrupt end.