White Noise (Widescreen Edition)
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DVD details
Actor: Chandra West, Deborah Kara Unger, Ian McNeice, Michael Keaton, Sarah StrangeBrand: KEATON,MICHAEL
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-05-17
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of White Noise (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Finally, some restraint!
Summary: 4 Stars
It is a pleasant surprise to walk into a movie expecting to dislike it, and to leave the theater satisfied.
Having read some of the reviews on this site, as well as some professional reviewers, I think they've missed the point of this film entirely. Reviewers on this site have also gotten their facts wrong. For example, Keaton has been in three movies since Jack Frost (yes, I agree that film was a disaster), and he served as the Executive Producer on another.
Jonathan Rivers' (Keaton) wife dies in a car accident and like all husbands who adore their wives, he grieves. One day he sees a man sitting in an SUV across the street from his house, and when he gets to work that same day, the man is sitting on a bench across the street. Rivers rushes out to ask why he is following him, and the man introduces himself as Raymond Price (Ian McNeice). Price claims that Keaton's wife has passed over, and that she has communicated with him. Rivers immediately dismisses this, but Price leaves him with a card, asking that he keep it.
The movie skips ahead six months, and we find Rivers moving into a new apartment. Unlike the home he shared with his wife, it is forbidding and cold: the walls are either blocked glass or grey cement.
Then he receives a phone call on his cell, and the "name" that comes up is "Anna's Cell". He rushes home and pulls out the bag of effects that the police gave him from the crash; one of the items therein is Anna's cell phone. It's off. Then he receives another call, this one while he is holding Anna's cell phone, and it too is from "Anna's Cell".
One morning at 2:30 the beeping of his answering machine awakens him. He gets out of bed and finds that there is one message. He plays it, and it is garbled with static.
These oddities are enough to cause Rivers to contact Price, and Rivers is introduced to the world of EVP, a phenomenon whereby one can receive messages from loved ones that have passed on through recorded white noise, and sometimes cause images on a monitor. Price has, literally, hundreds of video tapes and recordings, and he plays Rivers the voice of his wife, which, I believe, said something along the lines of "I love you John". With the white noise, it was hard to tell. <grin> Here's the first possibility of a "gaping plot hole" - Rivers immediately believes it is real, and becomes obsessed with getting to the next level of communication: seeing her face on a television screen. I have to agree that I thought he bought into it a little too quickly; however, hearing the voice of one's dead spouse can evoke emotions that make a person do things they normally wouldn't. As a person who has lost a spouse, trust me on this, I know.
Before Rivers is able to get to the next level Price winds up dead, all of his monitors and audio equipment (of which there was a considerable amount) destroyed, with Price buried underneath them.
This causes Rivers to set up a station of his own in his home, where he all too quickly develops a tremendous facility with highly advanced equipment. That may be another gaping plot hole, but it's forgivable. Do we really want to see Rivers poring through training manuals and teaching himself how to use this equipment? Of course not. *That* would be boring and unessential to the plot.
Assisting him is a client of Price's that he met when he first visited, Sarah Tate (Deborah Karah Unger). The more time Rivers spends with his own equipment, the more obsessed he becomes, to the point of having his ex-wife watch their son for longer periods, to flatly ignoring his son when he has physical custody. (That's unforgivable, but understandable when caught in the throes of an obsession.)
After a frustrating amount of time where nothing happens, suddenly he starts receiving messages from his wife. They're no longer the simple I Love You messages, but are instructive, telling him to go to certain places to save people.
This is where the movie gets interesting, because this is where the horror element kicks into high gear - and this is where I gained tremendous respect for the film. We had already received hints of external interference (apparitions), and we start to see more of them. There were several scenes where typical cheap horror frights could have been inserted just to get someone to squeal, but the director showed tremendous restraint, and for that I have great respect for him.
The ending was a complete surprise, and a very satisfying one, as it doesn't end like virtually every standard, schlock horror movie - which our country seems to produce as quickly as rabbits procreate. You don't need to be a genius, but you need to think about the ending, and remember bits of what has happened earlier in the film. If you don't pay attention, you'll miss it, and it might make the entire film seem irrelevant. But if you do pay attention, and you understand what is going on (I'll just say this: pay close attention to the fact that in the final sequence there is a set of monitors *just like Price and Rivers had* - and what could that possibly be for), it makes for a very clever ending.
The dénouement is touching, although the final view the movie presented to us was unnecessary, and almost qualified as a stupid horror movie ruse, which this movie avoided almost entirely. Thankfully.
I thought to myself as I left the theater: finally, a horror movie whose main goal wasn't to make me hop out of my seat through cheap tricks, is well filmed, well acted, and directed with subtlety instead of a ham handed hammer and a bag full of tricks.
Description of White Noise (Widescreen Edition)
A man believes he is receiving messages from his dead wife via electronic devices with instructions to save the people who are about to die.Genre: Horror
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 14-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD
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