Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is an accomplished architect with a beautiful, younger second wife and a beautiful son. The man is living, in a beautiful mansion, an almost idyllic second youth after a recent divorce. When Anna leaves to visit a friend, a long and interminable nightmare begins for Jonathan. The hours pass, waiting for her return, and around 02:30 a.m. the clock freezes.
The overnight arrival of the police will be clarifying: Anna died in a car accident while trying to change a flat tire, plunged down a cliff and drowned in the sea.
Meanwhile, a strange gentleman, a certain Price, approaches him, asserting that his wife, since dead, has contacted him because she wants to speak to her husband.
Months pass, and while Jonathan has once again resumed his relationship with his ex-wife, a series of strange, disturbing phenomena (calls from Anna's cell phone while it is turned off, strange messages on the answering machine, and the radio that seems to turn on and off autonomously) cause him to go to the mysterious Price. From him he discovers a terrifying reality: following the loss of his only 12-year-old son, the man is "haunted" by otherworldly presences that contact him via EVP (Elecronic Voice Phenomenon). Psychophonies (voice recordings on tapes) and videoplasties (images on television screens) convince him that, death is only a passage to another form of life: occult and parallel to the earthly one. But even though Anna's messages suggest that in the "afterlife" she is serene, sudden manifestations of diabolic entities upset Jonathan's fragile equilibrium bringing him to the brink of madness. Now gripped by the phenomenon and aided by another of Price's clients, the man arms himself with tape recorders, computers and videos and plunges into a never-ending nightmare that reaches its climax when he realizes that some of the images that have appeared on his "white" screens refer to people who are still alive and close to fatal accidents.
White Noise is a good film, the kind that focuses on "existential" themes and archetypes (the thorny question "is there anything after death?") that survive the technological and rational development of human society. Shot mostly in Vancouver and fortified by the presence of performers who seldom appear in films of this genre (Michael Keaton), the film proceeds brilliantly and linearly to a rather convulsive and slightly chaotic finale.
Director Geoffrey Sax (by derivation from productions made for the BBC) has talent to spare, and he shows it in some sunny, "postcard-like" sequences that only serve to anticipate dramatic nocturnal and shadowy moments (but always finely illustrated thanks to skillful use of lighting), achieving the effect of amplifying the viewer's "emotional" tension even more. Memorable, in this regard, is Jonathan's rescue of the car crash into a high-tension pylon.
The film focuses on a very heartfelt theme, and instead of playing with violent or splatter effects, it focuses heavily on psychological tension, particularly deepening the progressive "estrangement" of the protagonist, now gripped by the existence of a parallel and occult reality.
To render more of the state of mind (and isolation) to which the protagonist gradually lingers, the director has thoughtfully alternated long shots (with shots from the outside of the protagonist, filtered through the window and seen as a dot, while traffic flows underneath the apartment building) to close-ups (often shoulder shots) of Jonathan isolated at the computer or video, making use, moreover, of a vivid contrast of colors that go from the sunny, warm and soothing type (at the beginning of the film) to the cold, dreary and unnerving ones of the warehouse, jerkily lit by neon lights (in the finale).
It should be noted, among other things, that the theme has been addressed few times in the genre and that White Noise, in fact, is the first example of a film focusing on EVP phenomena.
The cast includes Michael Keaton, Deborah Kara Unger, Ian McNeice, Chandra West, Mike Dopud, Nicholas Elia, Amber Rothwell, Mitchell Kosterman, Suzanne Ristic, and Keegan Connor Tracy.
The screenplay for the film is by Niall Johnson.
Review by Undying1
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White Noise is available on DVD in the CG Entertainment catalog as of August 30, 2018. This psychological horror film directed by Geoffrey Sax in 2005 stars Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice - Little Pig Spirit, Batman - The Return). The film focuses on the theme of death and EVPs (Elecronic Voice Phenomenon). Precisely the latter are given ample space in the special content section featured on the Universal DVD distributed by CG Entertainment.
DVD EDITION.:
VIDEO: 16/9 2.35:1
LENGTH: 94′
AUDIO: Italian Dolby Digital 5.1, English Dolby Digital 5.1
N. DISKS: 1
SUBTITLES: Italian, English, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
EXTRA: Getting to know EVPs; How to record EVPs; Listening to believe: real EVPs; Commentary on the film with the director and Michael Keaton; Deleted scenes with director's commentary option
