“White Noise,” the latest in the recent string of Hollywood ghost movie/star vehicles, is a cliché-filled ghost story with too many dull stylistic flourishes and a plot you really shouldn’t think too hard about. None of this detracts from its intrinsic value as a thriller, though it does keep it from being anything more than simple fodder for the cinematically dead month of January.
The film begins by explaining its central gimmick, EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, which describes the ability of the dead to communicate with the living through electronic devices such as phones, televisions and radios. The film treats the phenomenon as a real occurrence, though whether it is or not hardly makes any difference. It’s not a new idea in ghost movies in any case, dating back to at least “Poltergeist,” when the family tried to communicate with their daughter through the blank channels of their television.
The plot concerns an architect (Michael Keaton) whose wife dies suddenly. Shortly afterward he begins receiving strange phone calls and hearing odd things on the radio. He is told by an investigator dealing with such matters that his wife is trying to communicate with him through electronic devices. He meets others who have experienced such forms of communication and soon begins making recordings of blank static in order to record the messages. Beyond this point the plot stops making a whole lot of sense.
In the right hands this plot could have been turned into something truly worthwhile, but everything is so mishandled that the material never rises above TV-movie quality. Director Geoffrey Sax adds arty camera angles and other overused claptrap for no other purpose than to let people know he is directing something, never seeming to think that a lack of style might have been more effective. When the camera starts doing 360s around the actors, it only serves to remind people they are watching a movie, the last thing you want to do if you’re trying to scare them.
The plot itself is also criminally mishandled, not only in its various loopholes but in the management of the characters as well. When Keaton’s wife dies we never see his reaction to the news. We are never given a chance to make that emotional connection to the character. The death of the wife is handled in such a perfunctory manner that it seems to serve no purpose other than to give Keaton an excuse for becoming obsessed with EVP. The character of Keaton’s son is even more cynically handled. Apparently the screenwriter thought it would be important for Keaton to have a son to make him more likable, but in order to skip over the emotional trauma the death of a mother would cause, they make the character a child from a previous marriage. This also serves the purpose of giving Keaton a place to ship the kid off to whenever he’s not needed for the advancement of
the plot.
What makes this movie recommendable is its individual scenes that actually work very well as pure horror filmmaking. These moments work because the filmmakers take the time to build up to them and don’t deactivate them by adding such superfluous elements as rising symphonic music or slash ‘n’ dash editing. With these sequences the film almost redeems itself, but subsequently squanders this capital on unexplainable plot developments and cheap thrills.
So while in the end the film comes out to nothing more than a cookie-
cutter thriller, what little worth remains makes it at least watchable for a sitting or two. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to transport the good elements of a bad movie into a better film.

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