White Noise DVD Review:

After finding out that his wife Anna (West) was pregnant, Jonathan Rivers (Keaton) is the happiest man alive but when Anna doesn’t return home that night, he starts to fear the worst. Two weeks later, Jonathan is approached by Raymond Price (McNeice) who tells him that Anna is dead but she is communicating with him through the medium of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). Jonathan dismisses his claim until he hears Anna’s voice on his answering machine.

After years of gore and killing teenagers, Hollywood has finally realised that there is more to horror with Asian cinema pointing the way. Can ‘White Noise’ scale the same heights of terror as ‘The Ring’ or ‘The Grudge’? No, but it is a good try.

EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) is an intriguing subject matter for a movie and has infinite possibilities in today’s technology driven world. The ideal that the dead can communicate through audio and visual mediums such as television, radio, telephones etc was touched upon in ‘The Ring’ but this tries to take the phenomena a lot further than a video tape. Here we get to hear and see the dead on the phone and on the TV and this sets up the potential for some good shocks.

Why the Asian approach to horror has worked so well over the last few years is that the filmmakers rely on shocks and not gore to get their frights. Sudden flashes, fast cuts and the power of suggestion can breed much more fear than a masked killer with a bloody knife. ‘White Noise’ tries this but only succeeds some of the time. There are some genuine jumpy moments here but nothing to really creep you out and have you cowering in fear. The reason is a lack of tension and backstory. Asian movies always have a tale behind the ghost’s appearance but ‘White Noise’ doesn’t explain the motivations behind the ‘three spirits’. This means the tension is not as high as it could have been and the characters and story are not developed enough.

Michael Keaton was a superstar in the late 80s early 90s but his star has fallen over recent years and it is hard to understand why. He is a very good actor who just doesn’t seem to be offered the roles he was getting in his glory years. ‘White Noise’ doesn’t do much to give his career any bouncebackability but it is a start. The character of Jonathan is very one-dimensional and Keaton doesn’t have much to do other than look at the TV and play with some equipment. He does do his best with what he is given but he can’t work miracles. Deborah Unger also has very little to do as fellow EVP investigator and the same can be said about Chandra West as Anna.

‘White Noise’ is a good try for Hollywood as it tries to get up to the horror standard set by Asian cinema but the film just doesn’t have the plot or backstory elements in place to reach those types of scares. You need to invest in the characters to become involved with them and this really doesn’t do enough to draw you in. With a lack of background on the ‘three spirits’ we never get to know their true motivations and this limits any terror that can be induced, therefore cutting down on the scares, which is the most important part of any horror movie. Lets hope Hollywood can go on from here and produce a really good scary movie of their own.

Star Rating = * *

BONUS FEATURES

Making Contact: EVP Experts (8.40 mins)

Co-directors Tom and Lisa Butler and founder Sarah Estep talk about AA-EVP (American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena) and its continuing research into EVP. Featuring actual recorded EVPs, the featurette looks into the history of the phenomena and looks at actual cases that the association has become involved with.

Recording the After Life at Home (4.25 mins)

AA-EVP co-directors Tom and Lisa Butler show you how to make EVP recordings of your own. They reveal what equipment you would need to record something and give instructions on how to actually to this in your own home, offering support via their website.

Hearing is Believing: Actual EVP Sessions (14.32 mins)

Host Jim Moret goes on two EVP investigations with AA-EVP co-directors Tom and Lisa Butler. The trio visit two haunted buildings, Holly Mont Castle in Los Angeles and the Excalibur Nightclub in Chicago. Tom and Lisa set out to record some EVP and reveal some supernatural history for both of the sites.

Deleted Scenes (9.34 mins)

Entitled ‘John drives to work’, ‘John reports Anna missing’, ‘Bar scene’, ‘Balcony hit’ and ‘Shocking twist’, these deleted or extended scenes suffer from not having an introduction or commentary telling you why they were removed.

OVERALL

The DVD presentation for ‘White Noise’ is very different to your usual Hollywood fair. With no behind the scenes featurettes or even a commentary track, the DVD concentrates on the phenomena of EVP instead and this is a refreshing change. Hearing actual recordings of EVP is actually more creepy than the film itself and each featurette makes for compulsive viewing, whatever your opinion on the phenomena. This makes the DVD an extremely interesting rent and a good buy for fans.



Jamie Kelwick

Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) is the occurance of the dead contacting the living through the static generated by modern electronic devices. EVP is a phenomenon that many people believe to be a true way of speaking to the dead, and since truth is often stranger than fiction it seemed an obvious idea to use this phenomenon in a film. Using the facts about EVP as a springboard for the film, White Noise begins strong only to find that there is no safe place for the film to land. In the end a good idea remains what it was in the conception; just an idea.

Architect Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) has his life in place when suddenly his wife goes missing. Her car is found with a flat tire by the side of the river, but nobody knows whether she is dead or alive. After months go by and Jonathan has had no word of his wife he is approached by a man who claims to have spoken with her dead spirit. Soon after they find his wife’s body, Jonathan becomes obsessed with the medium in which he believes he will be able to speak to his dead wife; EVP. Unfortunately more than just his wife comes through in the recordings and Jonathan begins to receive dark messages warning him of death.

While there are some sincerely creepy moments within the film, too much of the film becomes a mystery. As soon as there are big questions raised in a film, there had better be an equally big answer. In White Noise there are some answers, but none of them come near the level of mystery which was created already. This makes for a disappointing and somewhat anti-climactic ending for the film, which also becomes somewhat of a different film near the end as well. If all of this sounds confusing then I must be doing an accurate job describing White Noise.

Perhaps knowing what made the film most interesting, the special features on White Noise deal almost entirely with the real life phenomenon of EVP. Aside from the deleted scenes, which could have also been deleted from the DVD, the other three featurettes all deal with EVP as shown by experts Tom and Lisa Butler. In the featurette “Hearing is Believing”, live EVP sessions are recorded at various haunted sites. “Making Contact” shows the history of EVP, and “Recording the Afterlife at Home” shows how you can record on your own.

With an eye-catching cardboard slipcover, the White Noise DVD is a sharp looking package. The picture and sound are great, the menu is fitting, and all of this is somewhat unfortunate considering the film is not nearly what it could have been. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect is the involvement of Michael Keaton, who has been absent too long from the film world and should not have reappeared with a film as mediocre as White Noise. As tempting as it may look to buy, save your money and rent it if you are curious.

Ryan Izay