White Noise Review Country : USA Year: 2005 Genre: Horror/Ghosts Format: Theater Running Time: 101 minutes Distributor: Universal A recently widowed architect attempts to contact his late wife via the vagaries of broadcast signals, unwittingly attracting malevolent spirits..... Credits Directed by Geoffrey Sax. Written by Niall Johnson. Starring Michael Keaton, Chandra West, Deborah Kara Unger, Ian McNiece, and Sarah Strange. 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. Shortly after her death, he is approached by a man named Price (Ian McNeice), who is researched in the art of E.V.P. (Electronic Voice Phenomena) and claims he can contact the dead through the "white noise" of television or radio frequencies that are not receiving a broadcast. As Jonathan gradually becomes drawn into Price's world, he also meets the demure Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger) who has recently lost her fiance. Although his initial sessions are satisfying, with the dead Anna (Chandra West) intoning ghostly lovey-dovey bullshit, Jonathan is also warned that certain other spirits are out there and like to wreak havoc whenever a portal is opened. It's not long before the portly Price, who appears to be a heart attack looking for a place to happen anyway, is found dead in his home, seemingly of that very affliction. Except his audio/video equipment is trashed and his dwelling appears to be ransacked. Not to be dissuaded from his new hobby, though, Jonathan buys a shitload of digital equipment for his own in-home E.V.P. soiree and, working with the increasingly-frightened Sarah, comes to believe that his dead wife is using the communication to help him save the lives of others. Ooooh, but it ain't that simple. A trio of spiritual baddies, who resemble the Blues Brothers in silhouette form, are up to no good, and it becomes more and more apparent that they may be manipulating Jonathan into a potentially self-destructive predicament. By the time the apparitions reveal themselves at the film's conclusion, the cuts are too quick to appreciate whatever make-ups were involved, and the sound so damn loud that it's ear-splitting rather than scary. Up until the last act, director Geoffrey Sax has actually managed a fair amount of tension and dread just with the concept of what's going on, at least moreso than the implementation of it. Then comes the climax. Folks, there are at least two surefire ways to ruin a movie via lousy ending: 1.) Introduce a hokey new story element that doesn't jive with all that's happened so far, or 2.) Make the conclusion maddeningly ambiguous and confusing. Screenwriter Niall Johnson actually manages both fuck-ups in his script, and that's not an easy feat. The trailers and commercials for White Noise concentrate on defining E.V.P. with real-life documented so-called occurrences, none of which are alluded to in the movie. That's why the ads resonate so well. The stilted storytelling that drives the actual picture, while impressively shot in places, only deigns to betray the film that could have been. OFFICIAL SITE Review by Petch Lucas, for Pitofhorror.com