WHITE NOISE Heralded by an ad campaign whose extra-accordant content is far more compelling than the stuff in the actual movie, White Noise is the perfect picture for audiences who rely on musical stingers and sudden loud-assed sound effects for their horror fix. These are even groovier in a DTS-equipped auditorium, where the deafening barrages zip from left to right in speaker-to-speaker delivery. How this will play on home video remains to be seen; maybe someone can sit in the back of the room and intermittently clang a pair of cymbals together at the proper cues. But creepy commercials notwithstanding, White Noise hardly lives up to the hoopla it's been afforded. Vancouver architect Jonathan Rivers (a likable Michael Keaton) loses his wife in a car accident that may or may not involve foul play. MORE DARKNESS A flag should go up for a film that has been distributed overseas for two years while sitting in a cannister in a domestic cubby. A quick look at its cast (Anna Paquin and Giancarlo Gianni are the only recognizable names), and you wonder why Dimension decided to wide-open this 2002 potboiler for this year's Christmas horror snag. The answer could be, maybe because it's damned good? It doesn't start out that way, though, folks. An American (because of their accents, though all actors are non-American) family moves into a stately farm house somewhere in the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. Things immediately go awry, like the faucet's water pressure fading out, then turning the flow water dark for a few moments. Then the lights flicker on and off. MORE SALEM'S LOT 04 This project carries the cumbersome definition of Remake of an Adaptation of a bestselling Novel. And you can almost alleviate much of that mouthful with the insertion of the word Reinvention. Frankly, I'm tired of using the word "reinvention" in my reviews of contemporary horror remakes. While recent works like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, to a lesser extent, Dawn Of The Dead have enjoyed innovative tweaks and rearranged storylines which made them highly effective, I wanted to see an updated Salem's Lot which included the backstory, the supporting characters and the overall menace which Stephen King's novel detailed and which Tobe Hooper's otherwise-fine 1979 television miniseries omitted. Did I get my wish. No and yes. Mostly no.... but hell if I'm not pretty damned happy with this new one anyway. MORE PREVIOUS FEATURES - CURRENT FEATURES