Starring: Michael Keaton and Chandra West
Director: Geoffrey Sax
Rated: M15+
WHITE Noise opens with what may or may not be a quotation from Thomas Edison.
He suggests that there may come a time when technology will be able to pick up messages from the other side.
Ghosts and ectoplasm have had to do their bit (and have enlivened many a movie) but White Noise suggests that electronic phenomena, both audio and video (which show up on screens as those oscillating lines of white noise) are on the way to do the trick.
At this moment, they are not exactly clear, which gives the film writer enough scenes of recording and enhancing sound to bump up the tension — and there are two jump out of chair scenes as well.
If you believe in this kind of messaging from the dead, you will believe anything, especially the alleged statistics offered at the beginning and end. Apparently, a high percentage of such messages are threats rather than friendly.
This is an ordinary and okay show with Michael Keaton grieving over his dead wife and becoming obsessed with voices from the beyond, especially when he starts rescuing people from disasters that he sees before they happen thanks to his wife’s intervention.
One trouble is that all the people she warns about have been clients of the electronic channeller (Ian McNeice). One of them is a bereaved woman, Deborah Kara Unger.
Because the messages involve threats and physical danger, the film is something of a crime thriller as well — giving Michael Keaton plenty of opportunity to be anguished.
It’s the kind of plot popular in recent Japanese movies like The Ring, The Grudge, Into the Mirror, Chaos and Deep Water.
Perhaps we can look forward this time to a Japanese remake.
